
Class_£5LilJ_% 
Book iJN_k__ 



Copyright N"_ 



4_a. 



CCBDRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



FiLsoN Club Publications: No. 30 

The Story of a Poet: 
Madison Cawein 

His Intimate Life as Revealed by His Letters and Other Hitherto 
Unpublished Material, Including Reminiscences by His 
Closest Associates ; also Articles from News- 
papers and Magazines, and a List 
of His Poems 



BY 

OTTO A. ROTHERT 

Secretary of the Filson Club 

Author of Local History in Kentucky Literature, A History of Muhlenberg 
County, A History of Unity Baptist Church, etc. 



WITH MORE THAN SIXTY ILLUSTRATIONS 



JOHN P. MORTON & COMPANY 

Incorporated 

Louisville, Kentucky 
1921 



^6 






Copyright, 1921 
By otto a. ROTHERT 



m 2B 1921 



g)C!,A6l71.45 



Dedicated To 
MADISON CAWEIN II 



There are fairies; verily; 

Verily; 
For the old owl in the tree, 

Hollow tree, 
He who maketh melody 
For them tripping merrily, 

Told it me. 
There are fairies; verily. 

There are fairies. 



CONTENTS 

Pages 

The Purpose of this Book i^-^^ 

I A Picturography of Madison Cawein 1-68 

II The Youth of Cawein 69-81 

III Cawein's Life as Recorded by the Louisville Press.. . 82-119 

IV Cawein's Questionnaire 120-125 

V Cawein as I Knew Him 126-137 

VI The Death of Cawein 138-164 

VII The Cawein Family 165-166 

VIII A Posthumous Autobiography 167-329 

IX Letters Received by Cawein 330-339 

X Published Comments and Reviews by Cawein 340-353 

XI Estimates of Cawein's Poetry— 

By Five of His Contemporaries 354-38i 

XII Cawein and Some of His Kentucky Friends— 

By Bert Finck •• • 382-395 

XIII Reminiscences of Cawein — 

By Eleven of His Associates 396-454 

APPENDIX 

A. List of Cawein's Books 457-466 

B. Index to Poems in Cawein's Books 467-510 

C. Bibliographical References 51 1-524 

Index 525-545 



THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK 

The purpose of this book is to tell the life-story of Madison 
Cawein, the poet. The material is presented as a complete biography 
and in the form of a source book. The greater portion of the story 
is history as printed by his contemporary press and as revealed 
through his letters and the reminiscences and the recollections of 
his friends. 

Cawein preserved very little material touching upon the history 
of his life or of his works. That such data might some day be sought 
evidently never occurred to him. The little he saved bearing on 
his life was saved by mere chance, and most of it was either de- 
stroyed or widely scattered before this attempt to compile a biography 
was contemplated. Cawein died December 8, 19 14, and shortly 
thereafter his widow expressed her intention to write a book on 
his career. She was in poor health the greater part of the time after 
his death and therefore made no preparations to carry out her plan. 
Shortly after her death, which occurred in April, 1918, I made an 
investigation, expecting to find considerable Cawein material and to 
deposit it in the archives of the Filson Club for the benefit of persons 
who desired to do research work on that subject. All that then 
remained in the Cawein home was unhesitatingly placed at my 
disposal The bulk of it, not including the remnants of the poet's 
library, consisted of his high school diploma, an early scrap-book and 
about five hundred newspaper (not magazine) clippings pertaining to 
some of his books, about two hundred recent letters and a few poems 
in his own hand. If I am not mistaken, the quantity was even less 
than when I glanced over it one day during the last year of the poet's 
life — the year I knew him. 

The small collection of sundries turned over to me was too in- 
complete to serve any definite purpose. It was evident that the 
gathering of material could be done under less disadvantage if be- 
gun at once. Believing that some day the world would be greatly 
interested in the life-story of the poet I assumed the work of collecting 
material for and compiling a volume, regardless of the time and 
expense required. My plans were announced through the press; 
Louisville friends and other Kentuckians were interviewed; pil- 

ix 



Madison C aw e in 

grimages were made to most of his haunts; letters were sent and 
received, and about four hundred that had been written by Cawein 
were submitted; research work was done in various private and 
public libraries; visits were made in the East to some of his friends, 
including William Dean Howells, Clinton Scollard, Miss Jessie B. 
Rittenhouse, Henry Van Dyke and Harrison S. Morris. This book — 
a memorial to my friend — is the result of the undertaking. It is in 
every sense a labor of love; a task which has been more than compen- 
sated by the pleasure it has given. 

An attempt is made to show the esteem in which Cawein's works 
were held by his contemporaries. Like Poe and Keats and many 
other true poets, Cawein did not receive a general recognition 
while he was still writing. He now awaits the wide and deserved 
recognition which time alone bestows. That the number of appreci- 
ators of Cawein's works never decreased but slowly increased during his 
life-time points toward an enduring fame. Two years before he 
died. The Poetry Review of London in its issue for October, 1912 — 
a number devoted to Modern American Poetry — said, "He appears 
quite the biggest figure among American poets; his return to nature 
has no tinge of affectation; it is genuine to the smallest detail." 

Cawein's greatest hope was that his poetry would live. By 
publishing his poems in book form, after they had appeared in news- 
papers and magazines, he did much toward preserving it. During 
the course of his career he issued thirty-six volumes. He published a 
greater number of books of poems than did any other American poet. 
Some of the critics expressed the opinion that he wrote too much. 
The same critics declared, sooner or later, that notwithstanding the 
unusual quantity of his poetry most of it was of unusual quality. 
Six of his books consist chiefly of selections he made from previous 
volumes. It is generally admitted that a poet seldom knows his 
best work. To what extent this is true of Cawein must yet be de- 
termined. Miss Jessie B. Rittenhouse, of New York, is now engaged 
in making a Selection, which will be a step toward this end. 

Miss Rittenhouse has long been familiar with Cawein's poetry 
and has many times written of it with sympathetic insight and ap- 
preciation. The article upon Cawein in her book. The Younger 
American Poets, published in 1904, indicates that she entered into 
and divined many of the moods of his genius. That she, herself, 
is a poet is evident throughout her volume of poems. The Door of 
Dreams. In her well-known compilations of American poetry — 
The Little Book of American Verse, The Little Book of Modern Verse, 
and The Second Book of Modern Verse — she has raised the difficult 
task of anthology-making to a fine art and has shown that she is a 
poet worthy to select another's best work. It is peculiarly fitting and 
singularly fortunate that Miss Rittenhouse should undertake the 
making of a Selection which will take the form of a definitive edition. 



Mad is on Caw e in 

In the preparation of this volume on the life and the works of 
Cawein all material that was submitted to me or found after personal 
research was carefully considered. Every item which, in my opinion, 
bore on the poet's career was used. Should the reader possess any 
other letters, documents or data, or prepare for print his recollections 
of Cawein, the Filson Club will receive such material for deposit in 
its archives where it will be available to students, and from which 
collection parts or all may be selected for another publication. 

I am indebted to the many men and women who supplied me 
with material used in this book, especially to the correspondents of 
Cawein who submitted their Cawein letters. I am also greatly in- 
debted to the staff of the Louisville Free Public Library and to the 
friends of Cawein who, at my suggestion, wrote their reminiscences 
of him. Above all, however, I am indebted to Miss Anna Blanche 
McGill and Young E. Allison who aided me in many ways. 




Louisville, Kentucky 
March 23, 192 1. 



XI 



A PICTUROGRAPHY OF MADISON CAWEIN 

Madison Cawein as seen through sixty-three half-tone reproduc- 
tions of photographs, paintings and documents bearing on his life and 
works, which, with their explanatory texts, present a brief biography 
of the poet. 

List of Pictures 

Page 

Madison Cawein — Alberts, 1914 3 

Dr. William Cawein — about 1865 4 

Mrs. William Cawein — about 1865 5 

The Herancour Coat of Arms 6 

Site of Madison Cawein's Birthplace 7 

South Fork of Harrod's Creek 8 

The Old Stone Milk House, Rock Springs 9 

The Cawein Cottage on the Indiana Knobs 10 

View from the Cawein Cottage 11 

Madison Cawein and his Brothers — about 1881 12 

Madison, Charles and Fred Cawein — about 1884 13 

Madison Cawein — 1885 14 

Madison Cawein — 1887 15 

Commencement Program — second page 16 

Commencement Program — third page 17 

Diploma Received by Madison Cawein 18 

Louisville Male High School Building 19 

The Cawein Residence, High Avenue 20 

The Cawein Residence, Market Street 21 

The Newmarket Pool Room 22 

Publishing House of John P. Morton & Company 23 

The Babbit Home — Fred W. Cawein 24 

Ruins of Babbit's Mill — Wm. C. Cawein 25 

A Beech Grove, near Brownsboro 26 

An Old Home, near Brownsboro 27 

1 



Madison C aw e in 

Page 

A Glimpse of the Indiana Knobs 28 

Madison Cawein — about 1893 29 

An Old Barn, near Jefferson town — Fred W. Cawein 30 

Madison Cawein — 1900 31 

Madison Cawein in the Woods — 1902 32 

Frog Pond, near Kenwood Hill 33 

The Cawein Walk, Iroquois Park 34 

The Bowl, Iroquois Park 35 

The Enchanted Tree — Plaschke 36 

The "Gossamer Thread — Alberts 37 

Bluets and Springtime in Iroquois Park — Patty Thum 38 

Central Park and St. Paul's Church — Patty Thum 39 

The Announcement of Cawein's Wedding 40 

Madison Cawein's Residence, Burnett Avenue 41 

Mrs. Madison Cawein and Son — 1904 42 

Madison Cawein and Son — 1905 43 

Madison Cawein's Residence, St. James Court 44 

Madison Cawein's Library 45 

Shawnee Park and the Ohio River 46 

Cherokee Park and the Old Mill 47 

Madison Cawein — 1910 48 

Madison Cawein^ — 1912 49 

Madison Cawein — King, igi2 50 

Madison Cawein — Plaschke, 1912 51 

Silver Loving Cup Presented to Madison Cawein 52 

Madison Cawein, Bronze Bust — Roop, 1913 53 

The St. James Apartment House 54 

Unitarian Church and Louisville Free Public Library 55 

Madison Cawein — King, 1914 56 

Grave of Madison Cawein 57 

Death-mask of Madison Cawein — Roop, 1914 58 

Facsimile of Two Pages of a Note Book 59 

Facsimile of Unfinished Manuscript — first page 60 

Facsimile of Unfinished Manuscript — second page 62 

Facsimile of Unfinished Manuscript — third page 64 

Facsimile of Manuscript of "Proem" 66 

Facsimile of Manuscript of "Caverns" 67 

The Thirty-six Books by Madison Cawein 68 



A P icturo gr aphy 




From an oil painting by J. Bernhard Alberts, 1914 



Madison Cawein was born March 23, 1865, in Louisville, where 
he lived nearly all of his Hfe, and where he died December 8, 1914. 

3 



Madison C aw e in 




From a daguerreotype, about I860 



Dr. William Cawein was thirty-eight years old when his son 
Madison, the poet, was born. Dr. Cawein was a practical Herbalist. 



A Picturography 




From a daguerreotype, about 1865 



A/T J^^'^' f''^^'^"^ ^^w^i" was twenty-six years old when her son 
Madison, the poet, was born. She was interested in Spiritualism. 



Madison C aw e in 




From a sketch 



The Herancour coat of anrs. Dr. William Cawein was a de- 
scendant of Jean de Herancour who left France in 1685 for Miihlhofen, 
near the Rhine, Germany. There the poet's father was born in 1827. 



A P ictur gr a p hy 




From a photograph by Hesse. 1920 



Madison Cawein was born in Louisville in a house that stood 
opposite the Court House, and near Fifth Street. On its site now 
stands a brick building three stories high with a width of four windows. 



Madison C aw e in 




From a photograph by Fred W. Cawein, 1894 



When Cawein was nine years of age his parents moved to Rock 
Springs, a resort east of Louisville, near Brownsboro, on a hill over- 
looking the South Fork of Harrod's Creek. Many years later the poet 
said, "There for the first time I came in contact with wild nature." 

8 



A P ictur gr a phy 




From a photograph by Otto A. Rothert, 1920. 



The Rock Springs Hotel was managed by Cawein's father in 1874 
and 1875. Nothing remains of this once well-known resort except an 
old stone milk house from which there flows, now as then, a clear 
water spring. The poet often returned to the Rock Springs country. 



Madison C aw e in 




From a phuluyraph by Utto A. Ruilurt, I'JJO 



Cawein was in his eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth years when 
his parents lived in a cottage on the Knobs, near New Albany, In- 
diana. "Here I formed my great love for nature," said the poet in his 
comments on his youth. In 1879 the Caweins returned to Louisville. 



10 



A Picturography 




From a photograph by Hesse, 10 JO 



The Cawein cottage on the Knobs was in the center of a pano- 
rama of beautiful landscapes. On the Kentucky side, in the dim 
distance, can be seen Iroquois Park and Kenwood Hill. In later 
years the poet spent much time on these two hills near Louisville. 

11 



Madison C a w e i n 




From a photograph, about 1881 



Madison Cawein and his three brothers. Madison, the young- 
est, then aged about sixteen, is standing with his right hand on 
William's shoulder; John is holding a hat, and back of him is Charles. 

12 



A P ictur gr aphy 




From a photograph, about 1884 



Madison Cawein, and his brother Charles, and cousin Fred W. 
Cawein. Madison is standing in the center; Charles is at his right and 
Fred is sitting at his left. Fred was one of the poet s closest friends. 

13 



Madison C a w e i n 




From a photograph by Doerr, 1885 



Cawein as he appeared during his last year as a high school boy. 



14 



A Picturography 




From a photograph by Doerr, 1887 



Cawein was twenty- two years old when he pubh'shed his first book. 

15 



Madison C a w e i n 



MUSIC. 

PRAYER; 

BV REV. T. T. EATON, D. O. 

MUSIC. 

SAU'TATOHY with ORATION — I'ltisoN liKKOKM, .... W. K. VANDIVKU. 

rOEM—TiiK Class op '8(), ......... M. J. CAWKIX. 

MUSIC 
OKATION- I'Ki.KiiAi, Aii>Ti> K.DitcATloN, . - -■ . . . n. M. .lAUVIS. 

OKATION— Stkikks AND Strikkkk, H. 10 SIKVKUS. 

ATirEN.EUM OHATIOX— Kkntkckv and KKNTururANS, .... s. M( KRE. 

MUSIC. 
ORATION— TiiK Ghowth (IK MtrsiOAi, Tartk IN Louisviu.E ... (i. A.WEISS. 

OU.VTIOX— UK.l'dtil.IfAM.SM IN Eunoi'K, 

Willi ,VAI,EI)1(T0UY, M M. WALLER. 

MUSIC 

ALUMNI ADDRESS, - - AuiRKT S. liHANDEis, ("i.as.< or 1K75. 



Facsimile of second page of Commencement Program 



Madison Cawein graduated from the Louisville Male High School 
on June ii, 1886. As shown on the Program, he was the Class Poet. 

16 



A P i ctur gr a p hy 







MUSIC. 
|^PGSGr)faIi6r) oj j'rri^cs. 

Alumni Prize, 

Faculty Prize, 

English Literature Prize. 

Shakspere Prize. 

Ci0r)[crrir)q oj Ueeirczs, 

BY F. C. LEBER. M. D, 

President of the Louisville School Board. 

BENEPICTinN, 

MUSIC. 



CANDIDATES FOR DEGREES 

.M.\l)ISON J.C.WVEIN. K.M.KKK LATIMK.K. 

.1. MILKS (il.KA.SON, , .s.V.MlKL, .McKKK, .IK. 

.JA.MK-; li. HKIiDKN. CHUrU'dlLL TALBOT .SCHAUC'K 

ALKKKD IIKRR IIITK. KORKKT KLWOOD SIKVKIJS. 

UIOU.MAN IIOKPPNKK. .MATllEW .MASON WALLKIi. 

KOIiKirr MUIUIKLL .I'AUVl.S. (JKOROK A. WKI.SS. 
WILLIAM KNOX VANDIVKIt. 

CERTIFICATE OF PROFICIENCY. 
GKOIKilO JOHN UKKWKY. 



Facsimile of third page of Commencement Program 



The Class of '86 consisted of thirteen boys of whom Madison 
Cawein was the oldest. All received the degree of Bachelor of Arts. 

17 



Madison C aw e i n 




S 






<s 



4^j 






s> 



^: 



.,r 







/^ //, ,u,/A,»/y ////.//// ^./^. /y//, / , 



■-„///, y ^f, »/„,/,/. /m,, //„.j,//,/ ,r »/,,>, /uyn 



Padison |. (ftaincitt, 



'/■'"""/^ 



y"'"'/ 



LITEIiATORI5, JKND SCIENCE'.. 

/ICiii //y/i /,/,„/„„. '.,„/„/,.,//, //,. „../.y//„ i',/ //„,/„ »^„jy/li, 1 1 ,/.yy /„,„ ,.i 'I ,„ //„ /,/.,,/ /,^„// ..,„/l'', „..„.......,///, y A,„A.-/f, 



.k ^i"- . r_i--Jiv* . X 




Greatly reduced facsimile of Diploma 



Madison Cawein's diploma was signed by Dr. F. C. Leber, 
President, and Wm. J. Davis, Secretary, of the Louisville School 
Board; and by R. H. Carothers, Principal and Prof, of English 
Language; E. M. Murch, Prof, of Mathematics; H. W. Eaton, Prof, 
of Physics and Chemistry; Hugo R. M. Moeller, Prof, of Modern 
Languages; Marcus B. Allmond, Prof, of Ancient Languages; R. P. 
Halleck, Prof, of Logic, Psychology and Rhetoric; W. T. St. Clair, 
Adj. Prof.; and H. A. Gooch, Adj. Prof., the members of the faculty. 



18 



A P ictur gr aphy 




From a wood cut, aboiU 1860 



In 1886 the Louisville Male High Shool Building, Ninth and 
Chestnut streets, appeared very much as it had many years before 
Madison Cawein's school days. When Cawein attended this school 
it represented the academic department of the University of Louisville. 

19 



Madison C aw e i n 



fp^e^w 



rff: -- - 




■**«<.. 



From a pfioloyraph by Fred W. Cawein, about 1890 



Cawein lived on the south side of High Avenue, near Thirteenth 
Street, from 1882 to March 1886. The house was torn down many 
years ago. A Httle more than the front is shown on the extreme right. 

20 



A P ictur gr ap hy 




From a photograph by Hesse, 1920 



Cawein made his home with his parents at the south-east corner of 
Nineteenth and Market streets from 1886 until June, 1903, when he was 
married. He wrote nineteen of his books while living in this house. 

21 



Madison C aw e i n 




From a photograph by Hesse, 1020 



In 1887, and for about six years thereafter, Cawein was a cashier 
in the Newmarket pool room, on Third Street, where betting on horse 
races was the business transacted. The building is now occupied by 
the Caxton Printing Company, indicated by the swinging sign. 

22 



A P i ctur gr a phy 




From a photograph by Hesse, 1920 



Cawein's first book, Blooms of the Berry, was printed in October, 
1887, by John P. Morton & Company, Main Street, which published 
eleven of his thirty-six volumes, and, among other books, twenty-nine 
of the Filson Club Publications — including this volume. Number 30. 



23 



Madison C aw e i n 




From a water color by Fred W. Cawein, 189S 



During his high school years, and for many years thereafter, 
Cawein often returned to the Brownsboro country where he was the 
guest of the Babbits, whose old farm and home are near Rock Springs. 



24 



A P i ctur gr a p hy 




From a water color by Wm. C. Cawein, 1893 



In 1914, Cawein wrote: "The old water mill [Babbit's Mill] in the 
Valley of Rock Springs has played an important part in my poems 
of this locality, which I have celebrated in verse now for thirty years." 

25 



Madison C a w e i n 




From a photograph by Fred W. Cawein, 1894 



Sometimes Cawein wandered alone through the beech groves, 
over the fields, and along the streams in the Brownsboro country, 
and sometimes he was accompanied by the Babbits and other friends. 



26 



A P ictur gr a phy 




From a photograph by Fred W. Cawein, 1894 



This picturesque old home near Brownsboro, and many other 
old homes and human haunts elsewhere, appealed to Cawein no less 
than did the forests and fields and the hills and the hollows. 



27 



Madison C aw e i n 



"g^^i^ag 



iy«iii~"Tni'iTimiTninaram^ 




From a photograph by Hesse, 1920 



Cawein made many pilgrimages to the Indiana Knobs, near New 
Albany, where he had spent three years of his boyhood on a farm. 

28 



A P ictur gr aphy 




From a photograph, about 1893 



^<2^-.*z^^-c. / 'Ca-^^.^1^^^ 




At times Cawein left Kentucky for his health or to promote his 
art; but no place appealed to him as did the country around Louisville. 



29 



Madison C aw e i n 




^'Vv/cs:::^!^?- ..,„.^.,. 



From a water color by Fred W. Cawein, 1893 



From 1891 to 1903 the poet's father owned a small farm near 
Jeffersontown and about twelve miles from Louisville. Its principal 
features were an orchard, a vineyard and a garden. The poet often 
visited the place, although the Caweins never used it as a home. 
The largest building was an old barn, "low, swallow-swept and gray." 

30 



A Picturography 




From a photograph by Fred W. Cawein, 1900 



The poet in his study. Cawein Hved at Nineteenth and Market 
streets during the first seventeen years of his Hterary career. Shortly 
after publishing his first poems he was encouraged by the Louisville 
press. His works attracted the attention of eminent critics in the 
East and in England, and he soon gained an international reputation. 

31 



Madison C aw e i n 




From a photograph by Fred W. Cawein, 1902 



Madison Cawein spent much of his time in the heart of nature. 

32 



A Picturography 




From a photograph by James S. Escoll, lilK 



The Old Frog Pond near Kenwood Hill was one of Cawein's haunts. 

33 



Madison C a w e i n 




From a photograph by Hesse, 1920 



What is now known as the Cawein Walk was, in Cawein's time, 
and still is, a very secluded path in Iroquois Park. Its old stone 
steps were one of the poet's favorite "solitary places" for writing, 

34 



A Picturography 




photograph by Hesse, 1920 



Lying just beyond the southern end of the Cawein Walk is The 
Bowl, one of many beautiful scenes in Iroquois Park. This large, 
natural park — also known as Jacob Park — was an Elysium for Cawein. 



35 



Madison C a w e i n 




From an oil painting by Paul A. Plaschke, 1919 



"The Enchanted Tree," was painted in memory of Cawein who fre- 
quently lingered under this old sycamore on Silver Creek, near New 
Albany and the Silver Hills. For him it was another haunt of Pan. 

36 



A Picturography 








From an oil painting by J. Bernhardt Alberts, 1918 

Cawein suggested to his friend J. Bernhard Alberts, in November, 
1914: "If you'll paint a picture showing a faery wearing a necklace 
of dewdrops on a gossamer thread, I'll write a poem on it." Cawein 
died a few weeks later. In 1918 the artist painted "The Gossamer 
Thread," inspired by the Poet of the Fairies, and the Poet for Poets. 

37 



Madison C a w e i n 




From an oil painting by Patty Thutn, 1915 



"Bluets and Springtime in Iroquois Park," painted in memory of 
Cawein who often went to Iroquois Park to see the bluets in bloom. 



38 



A Picturography 




From an oil painting by Patty Thum, 1908 



"Central Park and St. Paul's Church" showing church in which 
Mr. and Mrs. Cawein were married, and park near which they lived. 

39 



Madison C aw e i n 



aitnuwrtvr iUe mttwia^ of titfivhiti^Ubn: 

to 

iHr. illai&iiioM 31. (jCrtfeiriit 

€httraitnv, 3i»n«r lije fanrHt 

ntttrtrrn Jtuniyri unit ki^vei^ 



nfti^r x^lxilti tfrtth 
103 Weiit ^&uvuett 



Facsimile of Wedding Announcement 



Madison Julius Cawein and Gertrude Foster McKelvey were 
married in Louisville, Kentucky, on Thursday morning, June 4, 1903. 



40 



A P i c tu r o g r a p hy 




From a photograph by Hesse, 1920 



Mr. and Mrs. Cawein lived on tha north side of Burnett Ave- 
nue, between First and Second streets, from June, 1903, to June, 1907. 



.41 



Madison C a w e i n 




From a photograph by Doerr, 1904 



Mrs. Madison Cawein and son, Preston Hamilton Cawein. The 
boy_born March i8, 1904— is the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Cawein. 

42 



A P i ctu r gr a phy 




From a photoyraph bu Daerr, 1905 



Madison Cawein and son, Preston Hamilton Cawein. After the 
death of the poet, the son's name was changed to Madison Cawein II. 

43 



Madison C a w e i n 




From a photograph by Hesse, 1920 



Mr. and Mrs. Cawein lived in a beautiful residence — center of 
picture — in St. James Court from June, 1907, to January, 1914. 
This house, owned by them, is now the property of their son. 



44 



A P ictu r gr a p hy 




From Book New? Monthlij, \oumhti, 1!J09 



Cawein's private library contained about fifteen hundred 
volumes. Its bay window over the porch faced the Fountain and 
Court. Every room in the house was expressive of his artistic taste. 



45 



Madison C a w e i n 




From a photograph by James Speed, 1912 



Cawein frequently strolled through Shawnee Park, Louisville's 
park on the Ohio River, watching the sunset behind the Indiana 
Knobs, or the moonrise, or the river glittering to the stars. 

46 



A P i ctu r gr a p hy 




From a photograph by James S. Escott, 1912 



Among Cawein's haunts in Cherokee Park was the ruins of 
Ward's Old Corn Mill, on the Middle Fork of Beargrass Creek, 
where Pan and Faun, and wood and water nymphs held rendezvous. 



47 



Madison C a w e i n 




From a photograph by Steffens 



AU^ "i «?^(a.«v^^' 



48 



A P i c tu r g r a p hy 




\ 




From a photograph by Cusick, 1912 



A tOtyS'C^^G''^^^^ 






49 



Madison C a w e i 



n 




Cartoon by Wyncie King, Louisville Herald, March 26, 1912' 



Cawein as seen by Wyncie King when the many Louisville ad- 
mirers of the poet presented him with a Silver Loving Cup on the 
twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of his first volume of poems.. 



50 



A P ictur gr a phy 




Cartoon by Paul A. Plaschke, Louisville Evening Post, March 30, 1912 



Cawein as seen by Paul A. Plaschke when the public presen- 
tation of the Silver Loving Cup took place in the Louisville Free 
Public Library on March 25, 1912, the poet's forty-seventh birthday. 

51 



Madison C a w e i n 




The Silver Loving Cup presented to Madison Cawein, March 25, 
1912, is ten and one-half inches high and bears the following inscription : 

To Madison Cawein by the Literati of Louisville under the 
Auspices of the Louisville Literary Club. 

To Commemorate the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Publica- 
tion of his First Book, Blooms of the Berry. 

March Twenty-fifth, 1887— 191 2. 

52 



A P iciur gr aphy 




The inscription on the Bronze Bust of Madison Cawein (by 
James L. Roop) presented to the Louisville Free Public Library reads: 

Madison Cawein, a Kentucky Tribute to a Kentucky Poet, 
Presented by The Louisville Literature Club, April 25, 1913. 

53 



Madison C aw e i n 




From a photograph by Hesse, 1920 



The Caweins, in January 1914, moved into the right hand 
apartment on the third floor of the St. James Apartment House, in 
St. James Court. There the poet died of apoplexy, December 8, 1914. 

54 



A P i c tu r g r a p hy 








From a photograph by Hesse, 1920 



Cawein was buried from the First Unitarian Church, Fourth and 
York streets. Opposite that church stands the Louisville Free Public 
Library where the poet spent many hours reading books and magazines. 

55 



Madison C aw e i n 




Cartoon by Wyncie King, Louisville Herald, December 9, 1914 



The Louisville press devoted many columns to Cawein at the 
time of his illness and death. The Louisville Herald published this 
cartoon by Wyncie King: "In Avalon, The Fairy Isle in Fairy Seas." 



56 



A P i c tu r o g r a p hy 




From a photograph by Hesse, 1920 



Cawein was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery, Louisville. At the 
head of his grave is that of his father, marked by the tall stone. 
At the side of his grave is that of his wife who died on April i6, 1918. 



57 



Madison C a w e i n 




Death-mask of Madison Cawein, made by James L. Roop. 

58 



A P ictur gr aphy 



. / ' 



Ok.ccI-^ 



Cawein filled many note-books, but as far as known, preserved 
very few. The two pages here shown were printed, after some changes 
were made, in 1906, in Nature Notes and Impressions in Prose and Verse. 



59 



Madison C aw e i n 



/A 



.\.£/J'l'-^T^^' 



U: 



' U^J)L''^^^<<^-^, 



i^-<HA. 






■iS^^.^^^'-'-t^ 



^ m 







Facsimile of the first of three pages in a composing note-book used 
by Cawein when writing in the woods — probably the year 1914. As 
far as is known this poem, here shown in process, was never finished. 

60 



A P i ctur gr a phy 



Three kisses I remember 
That never come again 

That make June of December 

And hold me heart and brain 
(And of my soul remain — ) 
(With longing and with pain) 

The first one hers who taught me 
To love against my will, 

That into knowledge brought me 
And bade me drink my fill 
(At life's wild running rill — ) 
(Whose passion haunts me still) 

The second one was given 



A transcription of the lines shown on the opposite page. 

61 



Madison C aw e i n 



y^..... 




/ yy< 



ZZL 



h n 









A. 



w-C 



;V 'y 



..„-^.rT"*— 7t5 



:i*;r7-:9^:'''^ 



..^t^<^^^-%>;-S 



i«^: 



/^^.K 



.1,^ *---;7 




Facsimile of the second of three pages in a note-book used by Cawein. 

62 



A P i ctur gr a phy 



Upon my nuptial night 
(It bade me know of heaven 

The rapture and deHght) 
The angel hosts of heaven 

Know no more of delight 
(It bore me up to heaven 

And bade me see the white 
Of dawn that on that height 
Still holds me with its light. 

The third one, filled with laughter 
And youth with joy abrim 

No kiss shall follow after 

To make my senses swim. 



A transcription of the lines shown on the opposite page. 

63 



Madison C aw e i n 



U/-^i^-^ 



■~.J.^.^ ._. 




e 









^ 



/-i? 



^=:f- 



.v«^.^'t::-"*^ ■•:'•'-■■'♦,■ f--.'-> ■ .-w^.^. 



^^1... V. 



-X ;^^- ^• 




■M 



Facsimile of the third of three pages in a note-book used by Cawein. 

64 



A P i c tu r g r a p hy 



(Its joy can never dim — 
With joy that cannot dim — 
Young as the new moon's rim- 
Gold as the new moon's rim — 
One with the cherubim — 
Born of a moment's whim — 
No time can ever dim — 
Born of a girl's wild whim — 
Its joy can never dim) 



A transcription of the lines shown on the opposite page. 

65 



Madison C a w e i n 




/4/ u '^Y' ^^ ";^''^' 










C 



■'yt 






J,./ -^r -"■ ^^-'^r' ^V^'^ 



a <?rt 7 (C 









^ :/ 



J • 












- / 



,; A.>c^ z--'-^' ^^ ^-''^""^ '^"^ 



f 



^^i<^rf>i^ 



Reduced facsimile of a completed manuscript. This poem was 
first published as the Proem to Myth and Romance, 1899, and a 
few years later republished in two of Madison Cawein's other books. 



66 



A Picturography 































/fn 



y-'ffy^yK. C-C*!-i -K C-A-M„v 



^y /c->^^^f^^ yy'e^:^. 



UcL'si^ ( a 



Xjj^ / (i-My^-ci, 



Reduced facsimile of a completed manuscript. "Caverns" was 
written in 1898 and shortly thereafter printed in a newspaper or maga- 
zine. It was later republished in three of Madison Cawein's books. 



67 



Madison C a iv e i n 




The thirty-six books by Madison Cawein contain about 2700 
poems; about 1500 are distinct originals and about 1200 are either 
unchanged reprints or changed versions. His original versions com- 
prise the greater part of twenty-five books. The Poems of Madison 
Cawein, in five large volumes, is a Compilation of his poems — in the 
original or in a new version — written before 1907. Six books consist 
chiefly of Selections he made from previous volumes. The Compila- 
tion and the various Selections cause many of his poems — some in the 
original, others in a changed version — to appear two or more times. 



68 



II 

THE YOUTH OF CAWEIN 

Madison Julius Cawein — Madison Cawein, the Kentucky poet — 
was born in Louisville, Kentucky, March 23, 1865, in a two- 
story frame house on the south side of Jefferson Street, opposite 
the Jefferson County Court House. The old store and residence 
was torn down many years ago, and on its site now stands a three- 
story brick building, numbered 506 West Jefferson Street, and at 
present occupied by W. C. Priest and Company. In the Louisville 
City Directory for 1865 the entry pertaining to his father reads: 
"William Cawein, confectioner, 176 West Jefferson; residence same." 
The directories indicate that the Caweins had lived in this house 
a few years previous to Madison's birth and that in 1866 the family 
moved to "477 West Jefferson, between Twelfth and Thirteenth." 
From 1870 to 1872 the Caweins occupied a house on the "North side 
Broadway, between Thirteenth and Fourteenth," and there conducted 
a bakery and confectionery. As early as about 1864 William Cawein 
began a "root business" in the rear of his store, where he bought and 
sold medicinal roots and herbs, and made a patent medicine known 
as "Panavera." In those years he was frequently called upon to 
act as chef at the Gait House, then one of the largest and most famous 
hotels in the South. 

In the spring of 1874, William Cawein accepted the post of 
manager of Rock Springs Hotel, a resort some twenty miles east of 
Louisville, near Brownsboro, on a hill overlooking the South Fork of 
Harrod's Creek. The place was built in 1870 and about six years 
later was destroyed by fire. Nothing remains of this short-lived, 
but well-known resort, except an old stone milk house, from which 
there flows, now as then, a clear water spring. William Cawein was 
fully qualified to conduct the business affairs of this hotel, for he was 
not only an experienced confectioner and chef, but also had the 
advantage of having acted as caterer at many celebrated banquets 
served in Louisville. The Caweins, however, remained only a year 
and a half in the country for during their entire stay Mrs. Cawein 
was in poor health and the family therefore decided to_ return to 
Louisville. The stay at Rock Springs gave William Cawein a better 

69 



Madison C aw e in 

opportunity than he theretofore had to study medicinal plants. 
And, as to the effect this Hfe in the country had. on his son Madison, 
then a boy aged nine years, the poet himself many years later wrote 
in his Questionnaire, a document quoted in full in another chapter of 
this volume: "There for the first time I came in contact with wild 
nature. Beautiful and majestic was nature there, of rocks and trees 
and waters. The old water mill [Babbit's Mill] in the valley of Rock 
Springs has played an important part in my poems of this locality, 
which I have celebrated in verse now for thirty years." It was the 
poet's first glimpse of Avalon. 

At Rock Springs Madison Cawein first met Mr. and Mrs. George 
A. Babbit and their children, Harry A., Roy E., and Carrie May, 
who lived on a nearby farm. All of them are represented by characters 
in The Poet and Nature. Later, during his high school years, he 
began a long series of visits to the Babbits. The first of these was 
in 1884 when, as we shall see, he and his cousin Charles G. Roth 
spent part of the summer there. From that time on down to about 
1908 the poet was the guest of the Babbits nearly every year and was 
frequently accompanied by his brothers and sister and some of his 
cousins. His brother William and his cousin Frederick, both of whom 
were artists, made more of these visits with him than any other 
of his kinsmen. All of the Babbits are now dead; the old mill dis- 
appeared many years ago, the Babbit house is falling into ruins and 
the fields and forests have undergone many changes; but their in- 
fluence over the poet in his youth and later years has immortalized 
the Babbit neighborhood as the heart. of the Cawein country. 

In the fall of 1875 the Caweins came back to Louisville and for 
about six months lived at Franklin and Buchanan streets, in a house 
still standing and still known as The Barnes' Slate House. The poet, 
later pictured that place in "The House of Shadows," a ghost 
story in prose: "I had never liked the house with its grey slate roof 
and its two peaked gables; its sodden and grassless yard, shadowy 
with sickly smelling eucalyptus trees; its sad garden of weedy flowers, 
general neglect and damp odor of decay." 

In the spring of 1876, or as Cawein once expressed it to me, 
"the spring of the Centennial," the family moved up on the Knobs 
near New Albany, Indiana, in the hope that the mother, who had 
been in poor health about two years, would be benefited by the 
change. There Mrs. Cawein regained her strength within a few months 
and the family continued to live on its twenty-acre, hill-top farm 
until the spring of 1879. 

Charles G. Roth, of St. Paul, Minnesota, cousin of Madison 
Cawein, and a native of Louisville, writing to me on the childhood 
days of the poet says: 

"My recollections of my days on the Knobs are not very distinct, 
for I was a boy of only about eight years when I lived there for a short 

70 



The Youth of Cawein 

time with the Caweins. I remember, however, that Madison enjoyed 
playing with his 'company' of lead soldiers. He kept them in the 
pink of condition, and I was always admonished to be careful not 
to break them when he got them out of their hiding place. They 
were exceedingly frail, and some disaster invariably happened when 
I joined him in putting them through 'maneuvers.' 

"I can visualize the old 'haunted house,' across the road from 
the one in which the Cawein family lived, but I more especially 
remember the 'tub nights' when every one of us boys took turns 
in a scrubbing under the auspices of Aunt Ana, Madison's mother. 
This tub feature was particularly distasteful to me as a child, because 
of an incident that never ceased to bring out the utmost mirth when- 
ever it was related; and it was related as late as 1907 by Madison 
himself, the last time I saw him, at the funeral services of my grand- 
father John Cawein. 

"The circumstances were these: I was 'billeted' with the 
family on the Knobs for the benefit of my health. A part of the 
treatment was frequent herb baths. One day while I was immersed 
in the bath, a storm began to rage. The entire family was diverted 
and gave vent to their various emotions from sundry points of ob- 
servation. It was absolutely impossible for me to extricate myself 
from that tub, for I was securely covered with a strong waterproof 
cloth. I shrieked and begged to be released so that I might see the 
storm. 

"The situation appealed to Madison's sense of humor; he teased 
me about it on every possible occasion, and took delight in telling 
others — giving gesticulations of my frenzied efTorts and wails of 
disappointment." 

The cottage the Caweins occupied on the Knobs has undergone 
few changes, but the garden of old-fashioned flowers and some of 
the trees that stood on the hill have disappeared. The family did not 
pretend to do any real farming, although the place was well supplied 
with poultry, cows and horses, and buildings such as are usually found 
on a farm. A large vegetable garden was one of its features. Going 
for the cows and working in the garden were among the duties of 
young Madison and his brothers. At night when the children were 
busy with their school lessons and story books, the mother was 
occupied with literature on psychology and spiritualism. In the 
meantime the father, who had already become known as Doctor 
Cawein, was studying anatomy, pharmacy and botany. Dr. Cawein 
was especially interested in medicinal plants and during his three 
years on the Knobs gathered many roots and herbs, not only for 
experimental purposes, but also for use in the medicines he made 
and sold. 

All sections of the Indiana Knobs ofifer beautiful landscapes; 
but none is more majestic than the one seen from the Cawein 

71 



M adis n C aw e in 

cottage. Standing in the yard on the east side of their house young 
Cawein undoubtedly often paused over the view that lay before him, 
and must have been much impressed with its grandeur. Across the 
Ohio River and in the distance beyond the valley he could see two 
forest covered hills which later became known as Iroquois Park and 
Kenwood Hill. He could not have realized that in these very places 
lay a great part of what was soon to become his Avalon and Elysium. 

The poet spent his eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth years in 
the hills of Southern Indiana. Later, in 1914, in his comments on 
this period of his life, he wrote in his Questionnaire "My recollections 
of our home in the Knobs are among my most vivid and pleasant; 
though poor, we were happy." In a letter to Hubert G. Shearin, 
written in November, 1907, he sums up his life near New Albany. 
The facts then furnished to Mr. Shearin were first published in the 
Library of Southern Literature, from which they have been quoted 
by a number of writers: 

"Afterwards we moved to Indiana — back of New Albany among 
the hills — on what is called the Knobs. Here I formed my great 
love for nature. For nearly three years we lived there in a small 
farmhouse on the top of a hill, surrounded by wooded hills and 
orchards, meadows and cornlands. If ever a boy and his brothers 
and sister were happy they were happy there. We walked to New 
Albany to school, a district school, every school-day from fall to spring, 
a distance of two and a half miles, but we enjoyed it. At least I 
know I did. I used to love to walk along by myself making up won- 
derful stories of pirate treasures and remarkable adventures which 
I continued from day to day in my imagination. It was a serial 
usually that I could continue unendingly — and which was dependent 
upon no publisher for future installments." 

In the early part of 1879 the Caweins returned to Louisville. 
After living at Twenty-fourth and Main streets a few months, they 
moved to High Avenue, between Twelfth and Thirteenth streets, 
near Thirteenth, first on the north side and shortly thereafter on the 
south side of the street. The house on the south side was a two-story 
brick overlooking the Ohio River. The city directory for 1880 notes 
William Cawein as "physician, 98 Seventh Street, near JefTerson; 
residence 51 High Avenue, near Thirteenth." The entry for 1881 
reads: "William Cawein, patent medicines, 98 Seventh Street, near 
Jefiferson; residence, 40 High Avenue, near Thirteenth." In 1882 
the numbering system throughout the city was changed and the 
entry for William Cawein became, "patent medicines, 332 Seventh; 
residence 1224 High Avenue." Dr. Cawein's classification remained 
as "patent medicines" until 1887 when it was changed to "physician" 
and continued as such until the time of his death. 

It was while living on High Avenue that Dr. Cawein began to 
devote practically all his time to the making of medicines. He was not 

72 



The Youth of C a we in 

a graduate of any school, but his self education was so thorough that 
he was permitted to practice medicine without a license. He main- 
tained a well equipped office and laboratory where he manufactured a 
number of remedies. He advertised them as "Dr. Wm. Cawein's 
Vegetable Family Medicines." Four of his patent medicines appear 
on his price-list printed in i88i: "Dr. Wm. Cawein's Halesia — For 
all Malarial and Contagious Fevers. Price $1.50;" "Dr. Wm. Cawein's 
Pannecia, or Blood Purifier. Price $1.00;" "Dr. Wm. Cawein's Chill 
Cure. Price $1.00;" "Dr. Wm. Cawein's Panavera — For all disorders 
of the Stomach and Bowels. Price $1.00." His oldest and best 
known medicine was "Panavera" — a remedy he began manufacturing 
about 1864 and patented on February 13, 1866. He claimed that 
his "Vegetable Family Medicines" or "Remedies" were cures for 
certain ailments only and guaranteed them as such. Unlike many 
other men in the same business, he did not advertise any preparation 
as a "cure-all." 

During the years the Caweins lived on High Avenue, young Madi- 
son attended school and often found time to help his father compound 
roots and herbs and barks and leaves into remedies. He was ever 
devoted to his mother, and seldom lost an opportunity to assist her 
in the work around the house, especially in her flower garden. Mrs. 
Cawein had always had more or less of a predilection for spiritualism, 
but about the time the family moved from the Knobs back to Louis- 
ville she began to take a greater interest in the subject. 

When Mrs. Cawein realized she possessed the power of medium- 
ship she sometimes lent her services in that capacity to some of her 
friends, who were interested in spiritualism. Among them was Edward 
Shippen, of Louisville. From April, 1879, to February, 1880, Mr. 
Shippen took down verbatim a number of messages received through 
her from certain spirits while she was in a trance. These messages 
consist principally of comments on this life and on the hereafter, and 
were printed twelve years later (1892) in Boston in a volume of 182 
pages entitled Woman and Her Relations to Humanity. No author's 
name is given; the preface is signed "Reporter." Mr. Shippen was 
the "Reporter" and also the compiler of the book, but there is nothing 
on the title page or in the preface to indicate that it was he who pre- 
pared the MS. for print. The volume is "Dedicated to Mrs. 
Annie C. Cawein." Her picture and a facsimile of her signature, 
"Christiana Cawein," serve as the frontispiece. It may be well to 
explain that Mrs. Cawein was known as "Aunt Ana" among her 
relatives and her most intimate friends. 

Madison Cawein was present not only when some of these 
messages were transmitted through his mother to Mr. Shippen, but 
also before and after that time when other seances took place. It is 
probable that Mrs. Cawein's spiritual conception of material things 
had a prenatal or a postnatal influence in the forming of the poetical 

73 



Madison Cawein 

visions of her son Madison, and that his mother's love of flowers and 
her interest in spiritual communication played a part in his early 
artistic development. 

The neighborhood on High Avenue where the old Cawein home 
was situated no longer exists. The ground was cleared many years 
ago and converted into a railroad yard. Miss Emily F, Bass, of 
Louisville, a friend and former neighbor of the Caweins, in a recent 
letter to me touching on this period of the poet's life, says: 

"In the early eighties our family and the Caweins were next door 
neighbors on High Avenue, between Twelfth and Thirteenth streets. 
Madison Cawein — or Mat, as everyone in the neighborhood called 
him — was a high school boy. In our family were my sister and my- 
self, about the ages of Mat and his sister Lilian. My recollections of 
the Caweins and the time we spent with them are most pleasant. 

"The homes occupied by the Caweins and by us were two story 
brick houses. Our back yard, where we children spent most of our 
time, terraced down to the river. From this vantage point we could 
see Corn Island, much worn and always alluring, the Indiana shore 
beyond it, and in the distance, the Knobs. The blue sky overhead, 
the river's wide stretch of tawny yellow, and the small island in the 
foreground presented a scene ever inviting and interesting to us. 
On the terraced ground near the river or on the island, Mat often 
sprawled at our feet, reading or telling stories. Many times he spoke 
of a mystical woman in white, on a snow-white steed, galloping before 
and beckoning him, so he said, to follow to the land of fairies. In 
winter our terraces were used as coasting places. The Cawein boys 
would steer for us, and Mat made up jingle after jingle as we coasted 
toward the river or trudged back to the starting point. He loved the 
open, especially the frosty, invigorating air. 

"His father was an herb doctor and personally gathered many of 
the roots and herbs he sold. Mat frequently accompanied him in his 
wanderings through the country in search of medicinal plants. Upon 
his return he gave us glowing accounts of the birds and flowers he had 
seen or of the fairies and ghosts and haunted places he said he had 
fallen in with on the excursion. 

"The supernatural, as well as the world of nature, made a strong 
appeal to him. I can still hear him reciting to us from 'Macbeth' 
quotations beginning 'Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd,' or 'Thou 
canst not say I did it: Never shake thy gory locks at me.' We read 
and re-read Don Quixote, and also many other books and poems. He 
often stood on a box or barrel and read or recited to us as a professional 
would address a large and learned audience. 

"Mrs. Cawein was always kind to us children. She was interested 
in spiritualism, and Mat suggested to us that perhaps the equestrian 
lady he so frequently saw and described was her control. One day he 
brought a letter to my mother. It was from Mrs. Cawein and per- 

74 



The Youth of C awe in 

tained to an invalid baby brother of ours. She expressed deep 
sympathy for us and concluded with a declaration that an Indian 
spirit had urged her to suggest the use of certain roots and herbs for 
the sick child. We never tried the prescription, but we kept the letter 
for many years. 

"We children felt that Mat was not the everyday kind of a boy. 
In his absence we frequently commented on the characteristics that 
made him seem different. His love for reading and telling wild tales, 
his many visions, his gentleness and his unusual deference to his 
mother and sister set him apart from the other boys we knew. Little 
did we dream that this high school boy would some day rank as 
one of the great nature poets of the world." 

Miss Bass' statement that young Cawein frequently accompanied 
his father on his wanderings through the country in search of medic- 
inal plants agrees with the recollections of a number of other persons 
who knew him in his youth. Dr. Cawein was an herbalist and an "herb 
doctor," and also a close and appreciative observer of nature. That 
the poet regarded his father a naturalist is shown in the poem he wrote 
of him after his death: "One Who Loved Nature." It must have been 
from his father, during these rambles in the country, that the embryo 
poet began to learn the names of trees and flowers and birds and 
insects he saw in the woods and fields and was able to use afterward 
so beautifully as symbols and in similies. 

Probably Cawein's wonderful knowledge of nature can be attrib- 
uted to his association with his father who was an "herb doctor," just 
as his supernatural fancies can be attributed to his mother's psychic 
experience. These were probably the greatest influences which in 
the youth of Cawein molded his poetic nature. 

Charles G. Roth, whose reminiscences of Madison Cawein's 
childhood are quoted on a preceding page, gives the following per- 
taining to the life of the young poet while a high school boy: 

"What an interminable distance it seemed for my young legs to 
walk from our home on Hancock Street down to my cousins on 
High Avenue — two miles! Madison was the magnet around which 
we boys and girls vibrated. This may have been due partly to his 
attractive powers, and partly to the fact that we were pretty certain 
to find him just where we expected him to be. I recall the great 
interest Madison took in a certain periodical, the name of which I 
have since forgotten. It was a publication for boys older than those 
who read The Youth's Companion. Madison read it over and over, 
and often aloud to us; and when he had finished he laid the copies 
away in a most precise manner, pile on pile. 

"During the few years the Caweins lived on High Avenue some 
of us children spent the greater part of the summers of 1884 and 
1885 on the BablDit farm, adjacent to Rock Springs and near Browns- 
boro. About ten years previous the Caweins had lived at Rock 

75 



Madison C awe in 

Springs and Madison had then, and during a few visits shortly there- 
after, become familiar with the surrounding country. He knew the 
swimming holes, the best springs, the picturesque views and the 
places of silence, and he took a delight in guiding us to them. 

"The first summer four of us went to the Babbits: Madison, 
his sister Lilian, my brother John and I. In those early days 
Madison had begun to rhyme. Many an hour was spent in scribbling 
poems. Sometimes these were inspired wholly by descriptions of the 
school teacher of the previous winter given us by Harry Babbit, the 
eldest of the Babbit children. Those were memorable vacation days. 
Lilian would stand on a rock at twilight, silhouetted against a young 
moon, singing 'By the Blue Alsatian Mountains,' while Madison was 
a-moon gazing, and the rest of us cavorted about, as children will, at 
approaching bed time. 

"When bed time came we took our lamp, Madison, John and I, 
and ascended to our room, the only up-stairs room in the house. The 
Babbits were a very religious family, and there were always evening 
prayers before retiring. We boys had a pack of cards and sometimes 
we set the lamp on the floor and indulged in a game of casino, strain- 
ing our ears for every approach of steps that might reveal the scandal- 
ous proceedings to the Babbits. 

"In the second summer two more visitors were added to our 
party: Rose Cawein and Charles L. Cawein. Charlie was already 
addicted to the practice of medicine. He administered doses of an 
excellent herb concoction, prepared by his father, and I personally 
can testify, and so could Madison, to its efficacy as a preventive of 
cholera morbus. 

"In 1913 when Madison was preparing The Poet and Nature, he 
wrote to me for some of my Babbit reminiscences. I offered a few 
facts that I thought might be helpful. Many an hour have I spent with 
this book and through it wandered back to my first visits to the country. 
I often wondered whether Madison's memory was at fault in some of 
the details or whether he intentionally exercised poetic license with 
some of the characters he used in the prose parts of this work. 'Mary' 
was Carrie May Babbit. Harry, not Roy, was the elder of the two 
Babbit boys. 'John' and 'Charlie' may be my brother John and my- 
self — at least I like to think so. The incident regarding the baseball 
and the bees, described in prose on page 82, is absolutely true; I was 
one of the participants. [This incident, like many others narrated, 
took place on the Babbit farm.] 

" 'The Ruined Mill' is the mill on the Babbit farm. Every time 
I saw Madison in the old place it was apparent that he was dreaming 
and wandering in the realms of romance. Every poem in The Poet and 
Nature appeals to me. This is especially true of the one on page 39, 
beginning, 'Where the path leads through the dell.' And so with some 
of the poems in his other books. His 'Standing-Stone Creek,' first 

76 



The Youth of C a we in 

published in Shapes and Shadows, must have stirred his soul every 
time he recalled it, for in it he described what he regarded from early- 
youth as one of his favorite haunts around Brownsboro. 

''The Poet and Nature is set amid surroundings that witnessed 
the adolescence of Madison Cawein. I can scarcely realize that I 
was present when he wrote some of the rhymes that were among the 
first outward expressions of his inner development. Many of the 
poems in this and his other volumes hark back to his boyhood days 
at Babbit's. It was there that Nature made not only its first, but 
also its most indelible impressions on the boy who became the greatest 
nature poet of his time." 

Madison Cawein attended the Louisville Male High School from 
September, 1881, to June, 1886. Thirty-four years later his friend 
and classmate, James B. Hebden, of Louisville, submitted to me the 
following regarding the poet and his school days: 

"Madison was a quiet, studious boy and a model pupil. We 
fellows, however, did not regard him as an exceptionally brilliant 
student. I first knew him at the ward school at Thirteenth and 
Green streets. He and some of the other boys of that neighborhood 
later went to Center and Walnut streets where the higher grades, 
preparatory to entering high school, were taught, and I went to Seven- 
teenth and Madison for the same purpose. In those years most of 
us were somewhat rough, but Madison, although frequently a spec- 
tator, never participated in our pranks. He was orderly, but not 
timid, and never indulged in practical jokes. 

"Having lived in the country and in various parts of the city he 
missed much class work and saw very little of any one school until he 
entered high school, and as a consequence was the oldest in our class 
by at least one year. On entering high school he was less quiet and 
became more like the other boys. He was among the few who did 
not play ball, but he often took part in the stunts performed on the 
playground swings and ladders. 

"Any one could get along with him, although he seemed to prefer 
the companionship of a certain few. Every member of his class liked 
him. One of his most intimate friends during his Junior year was 
Walter N. Burns. Many of us had nicknames. We called him 
'The Poet Ike' because of the shape of his nose, and McKee was 
'Rakey,' Gleason was 'Dago,' Hite was 'Tobe,' Hoeppner was 
'Hop,' Drewry was 'Reddie' and I was 'The Hibernian.' 

"Madison read a great deal, and even spent some recesses with 
books. One day when some of the boys were making confessions 
about reading Beadle's Half-Dime Novels on the sly, he told us he had 
'a whole loftful' of them at home and had read every one. 

"Even before he entered high school he impressed me as a lover 
of nature. He often went down to the Portland Ferry to look at the 
river, and from there sometimes crossed over to New Albany and 

77 



Madison C awe in 

wandered up into the Knobs where he had lived a few years before. 
It was shortly after his sophomore year that he began writing poetry. 
One of his first efforts had some lines in it to the effect that he would 
like to live and die like Keats. [For the poem see Nature Notes and 
Impressions, page 2.] When this poem was published in a local 
paper, some of us boys teased him about it. I remember we told him 
that if he lived and died like Keats, his literary career would be over 
'a macadamized road to a graveyard' — a hard road and its end soon 
reached. He did not resent our nonsense about his writing of poetry, 
but on the contrary took it in good part. He knew we were not 
serious, for when we arranged our literary programs, we never failed 
to include Cawein, and, furthermore, any and all ridicule we might 
have tried on him would have been outweighed by the encouragement 
he received from Professor Halleck. 

"I remember on one occasion the Alethean Society of the girls' 
high school and our Athenaeum Society held a joint meeting. We 
brought out Madison as one of our choice products. George Drewry, 
the master of ceremonies, in a humorous speech introduced him and 
referred to him as 'Our Poet Ike.' This led many to infer that 
Madison was going to read something of a humorous character, but 
he came prepared to read a serious poem of his own, and although it 
was a long one, everybody enjoyed it, and our Society felt proud of 
him. 

"Madison's word could always be depended upon and, furthermore, 
he was very considerate of his parents. During our senior year 
'Rakey' McKee and I frequently rowed up the river in a skiff. On 
one occasion we invited 'The Poet Ike.' The time set for the trip 
had about arrived, but Madison was not yet in sight. A few moments 
later we saw him coming down the river bank. When he got to the 
boat, he said, 'Boys, you'll have to excuse me. My parents have a 
prejudice against the river. I'd like to go with you, but I'll have to 
beg off.' He always pronounced 'prejudice' as though ending with 
the word 'dice.' He had walked over a mile to keep us from waiting 
for him, and gave up this river trip to please his parents. He was 
always sincere and reliable and considerate of others. 

"Two weeks before our commencement exercises an all day 
picnic was held in Central Park. The girls and boys of the graduating 
classes and their teachers ate dinner at one table. All of us were in 
the best of spirits. I can still hear Professor Halleck call, 'Madison, 
can you see pentameters in the movements of our jaws?' and our 
poet's answer, which was to the effect that everybody seemed to be 
working in 'gastronomic meters.' 

"The Louisville Female High School commencement took place 
in Macauley's Theatre on the morning of June 10, 1886. There were 
thirty-six graduates. Our class of thirteen served as ushers. Madi- 
son was assigned the seats near the stage and performed his task in 

78 



The Youth of Cawein 

Chesterfieldian style. If I am not mistaken, it was then that he first 
began to pay special attention to young ladies. I sat near him while 
the program was being rendered. Viewing the two semi-circles of 
girl graduates and listening to their recitations apparently impressed 
him more than a grand theatrical performance. 

"The next night was our turn on the stage. When Madison was 
called upon, he stepped forward, made a dignified bow and proceeded 
to read the Class Poem slowly and distinctly and very seriously. 
The applause was great; our class was prouder than ever of its poet, 
and our pride has increased ever since. He and I often met in later 
years, and our school days were usually the principal topic of our 
talks. I like to look back on him as a perfectly fine human being, a 
person who was just natural, a regular fellow, with all his genius." 

Professors Reuben Post Halleck and Robert H. Carothers were 
among the high school teachers of the young poet. Professor Hal- 
leck's reminiscences of Cawein's last years in school are given 
elsewhere in this volume. Professor Carothers in a letter to me 
writes: 

"Madison Cawein as a student displayed the same qualities that 
marked his after life. He was the same quiet, refined, studious and 
observant individual as in his maturer years. He enjoyed the sports 
of the boys, but as an onlooker rather than a participator in their 
games. Oftentimes, however, during the recess he remained in a class 
room engaged in study. He was not what is called a brilliant student, 
but had to labor in order to obtain his information. As always in 
such cases, he retained what he learned and could use it discriminat- 
ingly. 

"He was deeply interested in the study of English, in which I 
had the privilege of being his instructor for a while. Even then he 
delighted in poetry, and it would not be a difficult task to trace in 
his writings some influences derived from his study of Hale's Longer 
English Poems which was used as a text book. One of these is his 
fondness for unusual words, largely old English, which are found 
throughout his poems. One exercise he delighted in was the study of 
synonyms which he used with great discrimination. His success in 
the use of pure English shows that he kept up his studies in this 
respect during his life. An incident of this is shown by what he 
related to me after his return from a visit to Boston. Among others 
he met was Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who, in the course of their 
conversation, asked Mr. Cawein where he had studied English. Mr. 
Cawein told the Doctor, and then added that the class had studied 
one of his books, which greatly pleased the genial Doctor. 

" 'The boy is father of the man,' and Cawein the student fore- 
shadowed Cawein the poet." 

For many years, including the time Cawein attended school, the 
Louisville Male High School was the academic department of the 

79 



Madison Cawein 

University of Louisville with full authority to award the degree of 
Bachelor of Arts. The only academic degree ever conferred upon 
Madison Cawein was the A. B. he received in Louisville, June ii, 1886. 
That day — his Commencement Day — may be regarded as the real 
beginning of his literary career. While a school boy he had written a 
number of poems, but not until after graduation did he have anything 
like a semblance of freedom to exercise his rapidly developing gift. 

Cawein's literary activities covered a period of twenty-eight 
years. The first six years of his literary life were spent in the New- 
market, a pool room, where, as assistant cashier, he worked amid un- 
congenial surroundings; the twenty-two years that followed he 
devoted to poetry, although his health was poor the greater part of 
the time. 

The Newmarket — named after the celebrated race-course in 
England — was an establishment in which was transacted a legalized 
business of betting on horses and selling auction pools on races. 
Commenting on his connection with this gambling house Cawein 
said to me: "I was a priest in the Temple of Mammon and was 
obliged to mingle with those who worshiped there." He was well 
qualified to fill the position, for he was honest, quick and reliable, and 
did not gamble. His salary was a good one from the beginning, and 
was frequently increased. This employment made it possible for 
him to pay for the publication of his first books and also permitted 
him to accumulate some money. His savings were judiciously in- 
vested in lands in eastern Kentucky, which soon thereafter paid a good 
profit. He lived on his income from poems sold to newspapers and 
magazines and the profits made later through stock speculations. 

Practically all his time in his early manhood was taken up by 
clerical work in the pool room, literary work at home and rambles in 
the country. He, nevertheless, frequently found a few hours for his 
young lady friends. Shortly after he finished high school he began 
calling on a number of girls living in Portland, a western division of 
Louisville. In a recent interview one of the girls who knew young 
Cawein in those days, said to me: 

"Madison often brought a book, a box of candy or a bouquet to 
the girls on whom he called, but he usually hid the present in the 
shrubbery or in a tree near the house, and after ringing the door bell 
and greeting his hostess, he would ask her to hunt for the hidden gift. 
And when she found it, she also found a few lines of original verse. 
Madison took an active part in the candy pullings, parlor dances, 
musical entertainments and such other amusements in which our 
little Portland club indulged. He differed from the other boys in 
that he was more quiet and seldom spoke of himself. Most of us had 
more or less to say about where we had been and what we had done 
since our last meeting. Madison, however, said very little on such 
subjects. He told us ghost stories. 

80 



The Youth of Cawein 

"I remember one night eight or ten of us had gathered at the 
home of one of our friends then Hving in the Colonel Carr house, 
an old mansion-like residence said to be haunted. Madison was 
telling us a ghost story, and about the time we girls began to feel 
the presence of the ghosts that he pretended to see in the room, one of 
the boys quietly slipped down into the cellar and slowly turned off 
the gas. While the light was fading away, we clustered around 
Madison, assuming that if there was to be any protection from ghosts, 
it must come from him. The instant the room was in total dark- 
ness all of us, shrieking and trembling, rushed upon Madison. He 
was completely lost in our embraces, but dramatically continued 
his story until some one brought in a lighted lamp and restored order. 
After we had recovered from the fright, Madison simply said: 'Many 
a caress, but not a kiss; let's try it all over again.' 

"In a few years our Portland group began to scatter, and Madi- 
son, who was then about twenty-three years of age, drifted, like the 
rest of us, into circles in other parts of the city." 

Cawein always enjoyed impromptu and unceremonious gather- 
ings and avoided formal social functions whenever possible. One 
of his greatest pleasures from early youth was to wander through 
fields and forests and to loiter around old homes. He spent about four 
years of his boyhood in the Brownsboro country and in the New 
Albany Knobs, and ever thereafter made pilgrimages to these scenes. 
Sometimes he went alone and sometimes with friends. He severed 
his connection with the Newmarket in order to devote all his time to 
literature and to the exploring of the near-by country, and he soon 
became familiar with every hill and valley near Louisville. He loved 
them all, but the scenes that were always dearest to him were the 
hills and valleys amid which he spent his youth. 



81 



Ill 

CAWEIN'S LIFE AS RECORDED BY THE 
LOUISVILLE PRESS 

The following clippings present the life of Cawein as recorded in 
his own time by the Louisville press. Reviews of Cawein's works are 
not included in this chapter, except an advance notice of his first book: 

1886, June 12, Courier- Journal. [A column devoted to the Com- 
mencement Exercises of the Louisville Male High School held in 
Macauley's Theatre on June 11, contains the following relative 
to Mr. Cawein] : 

"The Class of '86" was the subject of an original poem ["Mari- 
ners"] of metrical and intrinsic excellence, by Mr. M. J. Cawein. 
It is a dangerous compliment, always, to speak of a young man as 
having poetic genius, but the vigorous thought as well as the rhyth- 
mical beauty of Mr. Cawein's poem forced that opinion from those 
who listened to him. 

1886, June 12, Louisville Commercial. [From a column report on 
the Commencement Exercises] : 

An original poem, "The Class of '86," was next read by M. J. 
Cawein. The vividness of imagination and command of language 
shown by the young poet indicate that he has wooed the muses with 
great success. 

1887, September 18, Louisville Commercial. A Louisville poet. 
Writings of Madison J. Cawein. His book of new poems — 
Blooms of the Berry. [The first press notice of Mr. Cawein's 
first book] : 

Madison J. Cawein, whose name is in a degree already familiar 
to the newspaper-reading public as a writer of some clever verse, has 
in the hand of John P. Morton «& Company, a volume of his poems, 
which will be ready about the first of October. 

82 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press 

The book will contain about ninety per cent, of poems heretofore 
unprinted, and those who have only read his contributions to the 
local press will be surprised at the especial excellence of many poerns 
of his work. Cawein is very young, and most of the verse in his 
maiden book was written before he was twenty years of age. He 
is but twenty-two now, and is a Louisville boy and a graduate of the 
High School. 

With characteristic modesty, Mr. Cawein, in his "Proem" says: 

Though the grander flowers I sought, 

But these berry-blooms to you, 

Evanescent as their dew. 
Only these I brought. 

Of course, the modesty of a poet is characteristic, if not worse, 
but these lines are very ingenuous. 

His themes are as varied as the rainbow, though the title of 
the book. Blooms of the Berry, would indicate principally pastoral 
poetry. The titles show for themselves the range of subjects, as they 
are pretty well chosen, for instance: "By Wold and Wood," "Antici- 
pation," "A Lament," "Distance," "Spring Twilight," "Stars," 
"Ghosts," "The Tollman's Daughter," "Harvesting," "The White 
Evening," "The Jessamine and the Morning-glory," and "The Dream 
of Christ." 

A few extracts will serve as material from which the reader may 
form an opinion of the merit of the work. They are made at random; 
the last verse of the first poem, a very melancholy piece, by which, 
however, the reader's mind should not be prejudiced, and runs thus: 

The lone white stars that glitter; 

The stream's complaining wave; 
Gray bats that dodge and flitter; 

Black crickets hid that rave; 
And me whose life is bitter, 

And one white head-stoned grave. 

Perhaps the most pleasing of the shorter pieces, here given in 
full, is "Distance": 

I dreamed last night once more I stood 

Knee-deep in purple clover leas; 
Your old home glimmered thro' its wood 

Of dark and melancholy trees. 

Where ev'ry sudden summer breeze 
That wantoned o'er the solitude 
The water's melody pursued. 

And sleepy hummings of the bees. 

83 



Madison Cawein 

And ankle-deep in violet blooms 

Methought I saw you standing there, 
A lawny light among the glooms, 

A crown of sunlight on your hair; 

Wild songsters singing every where 
Made lightning with their glossy plumes; 
About you clung the wild perfumes 

And swooned along the shining air. 

And then you called me, and my ears 

Grew flattered with the music, led 
In fancy back to sweeter years. 

Far sweeter years that now are dead ; 

And at your summons fast I sped, 
Buoyant as one a goal who nears. 
Ah! lost, dead love! I woke in tears; 

For as I neared you farther fled ! 

Of his love poetry, "In the Gardens of Falerina" is good, al- 
though an imitation. In the description of the garden the poet says : 

The bee dreams in the cherry bloom 

That sways above the berry bloom; 
The katydid grates where she's hid 

In leafy deeps of dreary gloom: 
The forming dew is globing on the grasses, 
Like rich spilled gems of some dark queen that passes. 

And then concludes with the following invocation to her for whom 
said scene was evidently inscribed: 

Bow all thy beauty to me, love. 

Lips, eyes, and hair to woo me, love. 
As bows and blows some satin rose 

Snow-soft and tame, that knew thee, love. 
Unto the common grass, that worshiping cowers, 
Dowering its love with all her musk of flowers. 

In blank verse is "The Punishment of Loke," the most preten- 
tious piece in the volume. The giant Thor is thus described as he 
joins the undertaking: 

Then great-limbed Thor sprang wind-like forth: — 
Red was his beard forked with the livid light. 
That clings among the tempest's locks of bale, 
Or fillets her tumultuous temples black, 

84 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press 

And drops with wild confusion on the hills; 
And thro' his beard, like to the storm's strong voice, 
His sullen words were strained, and when he spake 
The oldest forest bowed their crowns of leaves, 
And barmy skulls of mead half-raised were stayed 
Within Valhalla, and heroes great were dumb. 



1888, August 26, Courier- Journal, Editorial: Some recent poetry: 

William Dean Howells has in Harper's Magazine for September 
an article on recent poetry devoted chiefly to Madison J. Cawein and 
Robert Burns Wilson. Mr. Howells is liberal in his quotations from 
Mr. Cawein's new volume. Blooms of the Berry, and gives entire Mr. 
Wilson's poem, "In September," from Life and Love. 

The writer has been most fortunate in his selections from Mr. 
Wilson, but less so, we think, in what he has chosen from Mr. Cawein. 
But a critic sees what he likes, and Mr. Howells wants little of the 
flesh and blood in his poetry, or prose either. The last two stanzas 
of "In September' give to it a meaning, a suggestion, something be- 
yond a picture, and so the reader takes a profound interest in it. 

In Mr. Cawein's verse imagination runs riot; his language is 
rich, bold, free — at times his images are redundant, but the impression 
is always vivid. Poetry, to satisfy the senses, must have in it the 
personal element. One finds it to some extent in Mr. Wilson's 
verse; not prominent, not obtrusive, but present by hint or suggestion 
throughout, though in the main his is "the harvest of the quiet eye." 

Mr. Howells' praise of and quotation from Mr. Cawein may lead 
the reader to suppose that his work lacks dramatic force, that it 
wants the human element, and that Mr. Howells' praise is due to 
this. On the contrary, Mr. Cawein's poetry lacks only, or chiefly, 
self-restraint. A little more care in composition; a little more pains 
to make the reading easy; a little more appreciation of the value of 
silence; a recognition of the fact that the world is not always entitled 
to our thoughts hot from the furnace — these, with a severer judgment 
of his own work, will give Mr. Cawein an eminent place in poetry. 

Mr. Cawein's style is his own. Notwithstanding Mr. Howells' 
disappointment at not finding any evidence of Tennyson's influence 
in his work, we hold it to be apparent. In subject, in treatment, in 
language, Tennyson's influence can be traced, but only for good. 
There is no slavish imitation, no mere echoing of any subject, but 
familiarity of Tennyson and Swinburne is easily seen. Now if Mr. 
Cawein will choose as his master in the workshop, not Swinburne but 
Tennyson, we will have fewer poems, but better, and later when new 
editions are called for there will be less reason for his sober judgment 
omitting or regretting some of his indiscretions of youth. 

85 



Madison C aw e in 

One of the most noticeable poems of Mr. Cawein appeared in 
The Courier- Journal a few weeks ago [July 22, 1888], and was entitled, 
"The Mood O' the Earth." Here are some of the stanzas: 

My heart, my heart is high, my sweet, 
And the sense of summer is full; 
A sense of summer, — full fields of wheat, 
Full forests and waters cool. 

To live high up a life of mist 
With the white things in white skies. 
With their limbs of pearl and of amethyst, 
Who laugh blue humorous eyes! 

Or to creep and to suck like an elfin thing 
To the aching heart of a rose ; 
In the harebell's ear to cling and swing 
And whisper what no one knows ! 

To live on wild honey as fresh as thin 
As the rain that's left in a flower. 
And roll forth golden from feet to chin 
In the god-flower's Danae shower! 

Or free, full-throated curve back the throat 
With a vigorous look at the blue. 
And sing right staunch with a lusty note 
Like the hawk hurled where he flew ! 

God's life! the blood of the Earth is mine! 
And the mood of the Earth I'll take, 
And brim my soul with her wonderful wine, 
And sing till my heart doth break! 

We find in his new volume few things better than this, but in 
this one sees the need of revision and labor. 



1889, January 27, Louisville Commercial: A Poet's Life — Sketch 

OF THE early HISTORY AND THE PRESENT SURROUNDINGS OF 

Madison J. Cawein. A young man just making acquaint- 
ance WITH Fame and to whom Fortune is yet a stranger. 
The unfavorable conditions under which he has hitherto 
LABORED. His forthcoming work. 

Madison J. Cawein was born in Louisville on March 23, 1865. 
Though no records exist that any wizard, learned in the quaint, 
starry science of the olden time, cast his horoscope it is safe to say 

86 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press 

that at his birth good planets were in conjunction shooting earth- 
ward sweet influence and happy benedictions. For four dark, mur- 
derous years of civil war were drawing to a close, and the troubled 
heavens had already kindled with the dawn of a deep and prosperous 
peace. 

His family was originally French. It may be traced backward 
to a fountain-head of noble blood. Jean de Herancour was its 
founder. He was a Huguenot nobleman who flourished during the 
reign of Louis XIV. Little is known of him except that he owned a 
strong chateau and large estates in the Champagne country to the 
east of Paris and was able to muster at his pleasure a goodly force of 
vassals and retainers. The arms of this nobleman were three black 
mallets on a field argent. What significance attached to this device 
is not known. 

The poet has in his possession a family tree traced out on an 
antiquated scroll of yellow parchment, which is stamped with these 
armorial bearings of the family. 

For more than a hundred years before the time of De Herancour 
the Huguenots had been a sect in France. Humble followers of the 
religious tenets of John Calvin, at first barely enough in point of num- 
bers to form a congregation for divine worship, they became a powerful 
and dangerous political party, which threatened division in the king- 
dom. They clung to their faith with martyr-like devotion through 
fair and evil fortune. They were flouted, branded as outcasts, hunted 
and shot down like beasts of the forest. Through all the dark period 
of their dire persecution their sublime courage and heroic patience 
shine out in the history of those stormy times like the morning star 
glimpsed through the rack of the tempest. As a sect and a party they 
lived through the butchery of St. Bartholomew and survived the plots 
of the wily Richelieu. Proof against massacre and designing state- 
craft, they fell at last, prey to a woman. When the Grand Monarque 
rounded into the autumn of his days, he bethought him to make some 
atonement for a past that had been given up almost wholly to volup- 
tuous vice. Drawn away from the path of wisdom by the trains of 
his mistress, he resolved, at her instigation, to banish the heretical 
Huguenots forever from his realm. In 1685 Louis adroitly made his 
peace with God and de Maintenon by the revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes. This foolish coup of senile royalty exiled thousands and tens 
of thousands of Huguenots from France. The De Herancours were 
in the consequent exodus that poured the best laborers and the best 
blood of the kingdom pell-mell across its borders. They settled in 
the German provinces along the Rhine. The descendants of the old 
stock are to be found there to this day. The blood was gradually 
transmitted by a subtle natural chemistry from French to Teutonic 
as the successive generations inter-married with the German people. 
Dr. William Cawein, the father of the poet, now a venerable gentle- 

87 



Madison C aw e in 

man but still a practicing physician of the West End, came of this 
transplanted stock and emigrated to this country from the Rhine 
provinces. 

Cawein, as a school boy, passed through all the grades of the ward 
schools. He entered the Male High School in 1881, and graduated 
from that institution in 1886. In all the departments of his studies he 
was a good scholar. In certain of his classes he was a fair scholar 
from a sense of duty and diligent application ; in others he was a fa- 
mous one from a love of the subject. He hated mathematics with 
poetic heartiness; natural science, with all its glamour of pleasing 
experiment and scholarly speculation, he passed by as only tolerable. 
Latin he delighted in. He followed with unflagging and enthusiastic 
interest the wanderings and adventures of the "pious yEneas." The 
rest of his classmates took that redoubtable and classic hero to hell \n 
the sixth book and left him there; nor would they have hauled him 
back to earth and sunlight again for a month of holidays. But Cawein, 
more kind-hearted and more indefatigable than the rest, waded on 
alone through Virgil's tough but sonorous hexameters till he saw the 
happy period put to the toils and tribulations of the great Trojan. 
Horace's Odes, with their classical beauty of expression and their 
largess of sensuous thought, were even more to his liking. Above all 
his studies, however, he loved English literature. 

In his early youth he was an insatiable devourer of novels, and 
with the reading of the standard authors he mingled a great deal of 
trashy, flashy fiction. Up to his eighteenth year he had scarcely read 
a good English poem, and had never even dreamed of inditing one. 
In his Sophomore year his class took up as a text-book a work styled 
Longer English Poems, and in studying the excellent _ selections of 
this little volume he first gained a conception of the variety and rich- 
ness of English poetry, and the fine delight there is to be got from it. 
From the first nipple-draft of Castalian waters his swaddling genius 
grew apace. 

All of a sudden the passion of song came to him. He began to 
read and write poetry with the same savageness and voluptuous fury 
which thrills the veins of a tiger whelp, which weaned from its dam's 
milk has for the first time tasted blood. He wrote his first verses in 
imitation of Milton's L'Allegro and II Penseroso. Afterward, keep- 
ing pace with his class in the progress of its studies, he imitated Dryden, 
Goldsmith, Keats, and others. He scribbled incessantly. Within a 
few months after his initial dash into the realms of Poesy he had a 
bureau drawer, at home, stuffed full of rhymes as proof of his poetical 
prowess. There were odes, elegies, lays, lyrics, and in fact every sort 
of poem known — all in manuscript, and, happily, destined to remain 
so. In after years, the poet offered these firstlings of his genius as a 
hecatomb on the altar of the Muses and toasted his feet by their sacri- 
ficial blaze. 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press 

Soon after Cawein began to scribble in verse, the disastrous fact 
became bruited about gradually among his classmates. It hurt his 
reputation. He was looked on ever afterward with suspicion. A 
moon-struck bard was an anomaly among the rollicking blades of the 
school. It was his wont to make short sallies into the country every 
week or so, on Saturday holidays, and of a Sunday, to drink inspiration 
from the landscape and life of the country. These solitary poetic 
ramblings furnished his companions infinite amusement. He was wont, 
in pleasant weather, to spend whole days in wandering alone through 
the fields and woods. His heart, in these happy early years, was like 
a full-toned harp. Every sight or sound of beauty struck a chord of 
music from it. He could sit for hours in luxurious contentment in the 
shade of some pasture oak, when the sun was pouring its trembling 
flood of ethereal gold over the meadows, and the bees, those sum- 
mer revelers, were tippling nectar among the clover blossoms. But 
his observations of nature were not confined to pleasant seasons. He 
might be found at his lonely studies in the country when incendiary 
autumn had fired the forests with its blazing colors, and when winter 
had desolated all the landscape. From his rural ramblings he learned 
a philosophy of nature. It was not a new or original philosophy, but 
an old philosophy to which his soul fitted itself naturally. It shows 
itself in all his later writings. He does not look upon the universe as 
Wordsworth did, filling it with a spirit of thought and sympathy; nor 
as Shelley did, with a pervading spirit of love. He thinks of it as 
Keats thought of it, as a thing of living beauty. He loves it for its 
loveliness. The delight he takes in its contemplation is a delight 
germane to that the art connoisseur has in a striking canvas or a fine 
marble. 

During his school-boy days Cawein was lord of one splendid and 
favorite air-castle. It was his idea, when school-books should be put 
aside, to possess himself of some rural retreat, and there, in pleasant 
solitude, live the life and dream the dreams of a poet. It was his pur- 
pose to let pass the material things of this world, and to devote the 
energies of his nature to the writing of verse. His ideal of life in those 
days was such a life as Wordsworth lived at Grasmere. He wished to 
pass his days in sweet and constant communion with nature, with a 
good library to his hand and a coterie of friends who should be of con- 
genial spirit to his own. But alas for the rosy dreams of youth! A 
poet's schemes like the schemes of ordinary men and mice "gang aft 
agley." When he left school he started indeed to devote himself 
wholly to literature. He wrote one story in prose which was published 
in The Chicago Current and brought him $25. ["Paul Herancour's 
Sacrifice." Current, Chicago, Vol. 6, 1886, 959-60.] But he came finally 
to the conclusion that a young writer's pen, however brilliant, was a 
poor thing to depend upon for meat and bread. So he cast about for 
something else to do. 

89 



Madison C aw e in 

No other opening presenting itself, he secured a position through 
the influence of his brother, as assistant cashier in Waddill's New- 
market pool-rooms. He has held this position for the past two years. 

In the unhealthy moral atmosphere of the gambling-house and 
amid the feverish bustle of its life, he has worked day in and day out. 
The crowds that constantly throng the establishment would furnish 
excellent material for a novelist to study; but where is the poet that 
ever sang, who could suck inspiration from such an olio of humanity? 
The house is daily swarmed, till its hours of closing, with gamblers, 
horsemen, plungers, jockeys, swashbucklers, flash gentlemen and 
sharpers. Its crowds are no worse and certainly no better than the 
crowds that frequent such places elsewhere. The house, in fact, is 
one of the finest of the kind in the South or West. Its proprietor, 
Mr. A. M. Waddill, is one of the wealthiest and most famous gamblers 
south of the Ohio. He is, withal, a typical gambler. He was born 
down in Alabama in '48, of a rich and aristocratic parentage. He 
had opportunities for a splendid education, but books with more than 
fifty-two pages in them had no charms for the wild youngster. He 
learned to gamble early in his youth, and made gambling his profession 
while yet in his teens. He did not gamble for that sport and tingling 
excitement whose siren pleasure draws most hot-blooded youths to 
the gambling table; passionless and shrewd and calculating, he 
gamed only for the silver it put into his pocket. In the palmy days 
of the South before the war, he won a small fortune as a gambler on 
the river. He located in Louisville after the war, and soon became 
the king of the gamblers here. There was scarcely a paying faro 
house in town in which he did not have an interest. He owned the 
controlling interest in the Crockford, which in the old days was one of 
the most famous gambling houses in the South. Around its tables 
the big players and wealthy men were wont nightly to try their 
fortunes, and thousands of dollars were won and lost at a single 
sitting. 

In these autumnal days of his existence he lives in princely 
fashion in an elegant home on Chestnut Street, where he has sur- 
rounded himself with all the comforts of life. He is as true as steel to 
a friend; implacable and relentless to his enemies. Contrary from 
what one would expect from such a man, he is generous to a fault and 
princely in his charities. The words of the brave old Scottish toast 
might be applied to him as fittingly descriptive of his character: "A 
man who never turned his back on friend or foe." 

Such is the house that our poet works in, and such a man is his 
employer. Surely a poet never breathed a more uncongenial air. 
But his surroundings have not tainted his nature. He himself never 
gambles. When he first went into the house he made several bets on 
Apollo and Pegasus. He thought they ought to win by virtue of 
their mythological names, but Apollo's classic legs wouldn't work 

90 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press 

fast enough, and Pegasus had lost his wings. After several small 
losses he rested on the laurels he had won as a plunger and concluded 
to stick to poetry. 

That Cawein has risen superior to the circumstances into which 
necessity has apparently placed him is proof of his genius. Sordid 
worldly and exciting pleasures have time and again proved silken 
jesses to hinder falcon spirits from their flight. But Cawein's airy 
fancies and dreams breathing of woods and fields and steeped in 
beauty have no bare suggestion of the poet's daily surroundings. 
Indeed, he has written some of his sweetest songs at his desk in the 
Newmarket. 

Cawein's home is at the corner of Nineteenth and Market. It is 
a large, painted brick house. It sits in a yard of comfortable size, 
and is half embowered among trees and shrubs. It is probably the 
handsomest residence in that portion of the city. His home is very 
home-like. Its atmosphere is one of refinement and culture. It is 
furnished with a rare degree of good taste, which has happily failed to 
sacrifice comfort to elegance. The library is a well-selected and 
extensive one. It was formed largely by the poet, who from boyhood 
has exercised a principle which every one would do well to adopt — 
viz.: to buy every book that he reads. Cawein does all of his literary 
work in his bed-room in the rear of the second story. It is a snug little 
apartment. Its eastern window is high enough above the contiguous 
dwellings to take the dawn ; its western window commands a prospect 
of suburban landscape which is not altogether unattractive with its 
background of smoky Indiana hills. On the walls are two unpre- 
tentious pictures. One is a picture of a pretty girl reclining, with a 
wealth of blonde hair streaming down in luminous masses over her 
shoulders. It is called "The Dreamer." The other is an engraved 
portrait of Amelie Rives, whose warm type of beauty the poet admires 
extravagantly. Cawein gets ofi from work at 9 o'clock at night. 
There would be little time left for literary effort if he cared to work. 
But he never writes at night. He fears, he says, that he might weave 
the somberness of the night into his verses. He works in the morning. 
He rises at 6:30 and is at his desk till 8. He is an indefatigable 
worker. When the creative ecstacy is on him, he can scarcely write 
fast enough to put on paper his crowding thoughts and fancies. 
Afterwards he criticizes his verses coldly, lops off unmercifully, 
changes a word here, elaborates an idea there, and keeps up this 
laborious polishing until the manuscript leaves his hands. At times 
he spends an hour upon a single line in endeavoring to turn it in the 
happiest way. 

Cawein has published two books — Blooms of the Berry and The 
Triumph of Music. Both were published by John P. Morton & Com- 
pany, of this city. Mr. William Dean Howells gave both productions 
the most flattering notices in Harper's Monthly. In the same number 

91 



Madison Cawein 

in which he reviewed The Triumph of Music, he reviewed a collection 
of poems by Robert Burns Wilson. He drew no comparison between 
the two poets; he praised them both in unstinted measure; but he 
dwelt longer upon Cawein and, as it seemed, more relishingly and 
lovingly. One impartial would infer, he set the young singer above 
the older bard, who had already won his laurels. This might be laid 
to the critic's knightly generosity which with kind preference chose to 
give the greater meed of praise to the unrecognized genius who stood 
in the stronger need. It is probable, however, that no such motive 
actuated him. It is no unnatural deduction that he considers Cawein 
the greater and more promising poet of the two. Cawein has, indeed, 
more power than Wilson; his imagination is stronger, freer, wilder, 
richer; he is the mightier wizard with the English language, which 
yields unwonted music beneath his magic spells; he is greater in his 
mastership of metre; greater in his versatility. Wilson is a singer, 
whose best work is already done; Cawein is a poet, whose present is 
a dawn and earnest of yet greater things. The former's songs, while 
still sweet, are losing their freshness and variety. He still sings, but 
he sings to the old tunes. Cawein 's music is always sweet and varied 
always. Wilson is a shepherd swain piping music from his oaten reed, 
that breathes of the beauty of pastoral landscapes and mingles with 
the music of summer brooks and singing birds. Cawein is a minstrel 
who plays upon a harp of many strings and twangs sweetly upon them 
all. 

A few of the poems in Cawein 's last book were severely censured 
for their broadness. In their warmth of passionate feeling they 
trenched upon the furthest borders of the poet's elastic license. This 
fact and the strictures which were passed upon them should have been 
enough, it would seem, to make the book take in these prurient days, 
when any production which is ofif color morally is snapped up eagerly 
by the public. But this case was an exception; the author lost money 
on both his publications. 

He will publish another volume early in the coming month. His 
work is already in the hands of Houghton, Mifflin & Company, the 
celebrated publishing firm of Boston. [Should read John P. Morton 
& Company, of Louisville.] The proof sheets have already been sent 
to the author for correction. In this new book, Accolon of Gaul, the 
poet leaves song and makes trial in a new and more ambitious field. 
The principal poem of the collection is a metrical romance, sixteen 
hundred lines in length, which goes back for a subject to the witching 
and legendary days of the good King Arthur — those dim days of early 
chivalry whose charm still lives in the writings of Tennyson and 
Swinburne. This is a dangerous undertaking for so young a writer. 
Great geniuses have been at work amid the golden fertility of this 
delightful field ; and he must indeed swing a golden sickle who gleans 
a sheaf there which will reward him for his labor. 

92 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press 

As a man, Cawein's character is distinguished by simpHcity, 
sympathy and glowing enthusiasm. He has read widely and talks 
entertainingly. He is withal a frank and generous companion. He 
is overflowing with spirits and has an abounding interest in everything 
around him. There is not a stain of dark melancholy, either real or 
feigned, in the weft of his nature. He is too full of health and interest 
and bright dreams to have room for hypochondria. If he ever shows 
a darker mood in his writings, his sadness is tender rather than bitter. 

If the unborn day may be presaged from the signs of the dawn, 
Cawein's future will be bright as his own strong spirit, bright as his 
friends' hopes for his success. He has won already a modicum of 
fame; fortune will come later, and fuller fame with the fuller life into 
which the years are gradually ripening him. — Walter N. Burns. 



1894, January 21, Courier- Journal. A Louisville Poet. A Sou- 
thern SINGER BETTER KNOWN ABROAD THAN AMONG HIS OWN 

PEOPLE. How Madison Cawein's worth was discovered by 
William Dean Ho wells. High School graduate of whom 
London literary papers speak with enthusiasm. Future 
histories of American poetry will contain the name of 
Anderson M. Waddill. A soaring ambition. 

Some devoted scientist, the story goes, made a pilgrimage to the 
shrine of a great prophet of science. Who the pilgrim was matters 
not, but the great scientist was Charles Darwin. The pilgrim thought 
he would like to know how the country folk in that Kentish hamlet 
regarded the great man who made his home among them ; so he asked 
a cottager. "Master Darwin, sir?" was the answer. "Aye, we all 
know him. Indeed, yes, sir, and we think a deal of him, too, sir. He's 
the kindest-hearted old gentleman in these parts, sir." A large part 
of a century devoted to observation, to the classification of innumer- 
able facts, to intricate problems of induction, all tending to advance 
the greatest abstract discovery of the era, and Charles Darwin had 
earned for himself the reputation in his own home of "the kindest- 
hearted old gentleman in these parts." The story is recalled by the 
position in Louisville of Louisville's poet; not that there is any parallel 
as to aim, or age, or achievement between the cases of Madison 
Cawein and the prophet of evolution, but only that here is a man 
whom all the literary world knows as a poet, while Louisville only 
knows him as a young man who writes poetry. 

The Market Street cars going west take you past rows of houses 
with all kinds of exteriors except the poetical kind, and at the corner 
of Nineteenth there is a swinging shingle with the inscription, "Dr. 
Cawein." The house distinguished by this sign is the home of the 
young poet. The man himself would never pass for a poet with any 

93 



Madison C aw e in 

one not accustomed to read physiognomies. Browning looked like 
a prosperous Englishman of business and beef; Cawein at first looks 
like any other Louisville young man, only a little older than he really 
is. He wears the conventional clothes and the conventional mustache. 
You must scrutinize his face before you will see in it anything out of 
common, and then it will strike you that the nose is large and sharp, 
and nose and eyes together have the look of quest. He seems to be 
seeking something eagerly. As for the languorous air of one who 
dreams luscious beauty, that may come when the dreams are in prog- 
ress, but the general cast of his features is almost harsh. On the 
whole, speaking for myself, I would have said, after a conversation 
with Cawein, as with a stranger, that he was an uncommon man, with 
a strong character and a keen mind, but never that he was a poet. 
Look at his picture and see if you recognize the man of whom William 
Dean Howells wrote: "It is as if we had another Keats, or as if that 
fine, sensitive spirit had come again in a Kentuckian avatar, with all 
its tremulous hunger for beauty," or the author of these lines: 

Some frail lady white 

As if of water moonbeams, filmy dight 

Who waves diaphanous beauty on some cliff 

That drowsing purrs with moon-drenched pines. 

Madison Cawein — and the name is properly pronounced "Kah- 
wine," with the accent on the second syllable, not "Kay-wine" — is 
another illustration of the American theory that the intermingling 
of different races results in intellectual vigor. His father's family 
is of that wonderful Huguenot stock that gave America the Bayards 
and England the Romillies, but on the mother's side he is of German 
descent. In 1886 he graduated at the Louisville Male High School, 
but had already taken to that pursuit of stringing verses which has 
been the ruin of many a good man. Nobody seems to have objected 
very strongly to this juvenile weakness, but nobody encouraged it. 
Not content with writing these verses, he wanted to see them in print, 
and ten or twelve years ago sent a short piece to The Courier -Journal 
for publication, and when Madison Cawein first saw himself in print 
it was in The Courier- Journal' s type. What the name of this effusion 
was he has now entirely forgotten, but he says "it was the first of 
my verses I had ever seen in print, and I was very happy." [See 
Courier-Journal clipping, pages lOi and 102.] 

He never thought of making a living by literature, but, without 
a murmur, walked into the first occupation that offered a prospect of 
providing him with bread and cheese. Future handbooks of English 
literature will have to record that this occupation was in the 
pool-room then kept by Messrs. Waddill & Burt, and thus shall those 
well-remembered "sports" attain a celebrity of which neither ever 
dreamed. As a curiosity of literature this employment in a gam- 

94 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press 

bling-den of a man who was destined to become prominent in a new 
school of American poetry is as interesting as anything recorded by 
the elder Disraeli. New York has her stockbroker-poet to match the 
instance, but, apart from Edmund Clarence Stedman, Cawein prob- 
ably stands alone as a man who has been in the thick of the 
degrading scramble and yet carried out of it still brightly burning the 
sacred torch to whose flame its atmosphere is generally poisonous. 
Not only this, but Cawein wrote poems while he was employed in 
that pool-room. Best of all, perhaps, it was his success in the 
pool-room that enabled him to deliberately say farewell to all mere 
money-getting pursuits and settle down to writing verse as his one 
and only serious employment. 

Louisville can never claim the honor of having discovered Cawein ; 
the information that she had a poet must needs be conveyed to her 
between the covers of Harper's Magazine. Blooms of the Berry was 
published in a limited edition by John P. Morton & Company in 1887. 
William Dean Howells was then doing "The Editor's Study" for 
Harper's, and Mildred Howells, his twelve-year-old daughter, was 
one day rummaging about in a heap of books that had been sent in 
for notice. Presently in came Miss Mildred, running to her father 
with a book she had found in the heap. "Papa," she exclaimed in 
great glee, "here's a poet." Howells knew his daughter Mildred for 
a precocious girl in all that appertained to literature, and gave his 
attention to her find. It was Blooms of the Berry, and it had the dis- 
tinguished honor of an approving notice in the magazine for May, 
1888. This, as the author says, "surprised the home people," as it 
well might, for many of the short poems in the volume had already 
appeared in The Courier-Journal without attracting any special 
attention. 

Two years ago Cawein was Howells' guest at Lynn, Massachusetts. 
The young Louisvillian delights to talk of his Yankee discoverer. 
"Howells," he says, "is not at all the sort of man you would imagine 
him to be from his writings. He is a whole-souled, kind, genial man." 
This invitation was sent and accepted just after Howells' second notice 
of Cawein, the book this time being Accolon of Gaul, still its author's 
favorite and at that time the most ambitious work he had attempted. 

Another memory which will always be a bright one for Madison 
Cawein is that of James Whitcomb Riley's early appreciation of his 
work. Whatever triumphs the future may hold for the Kentucky 
poet, he can never forget the flush of pride which came over him when 
his elder brother-singer published in Green Fields and Running Brooks 
that beautiful little lyric in his honor, "A Southern Singer," and again 
when he dedicated to him his Flying Islands of the Night. 

But the time has come when the praise of other poets make but 
little difference to this man's position in the literary world. His fame 
has passed beyond the limits of his own country. His works are no 

95 



Madison Cawein 

longer published by a Louisville firm, but simultaneously in London 
and New York by George Putnam Sons. His name recurs again and 
again in the review columns of metropolitan literary papers. The 
London Spectator, Athenaeum and Speaker, to say nothing of The 
Times, seemed to take it for granted that Madison Cawein is acknow- 
ledged in his own country as one of its very foremost verse-writers. 
If he can only keep up the supply, and keep it up to the standard he 
has already reached, his position in the world of letters is secure. The 
chances are that he will do much more than this. 

One dark cloud, however, still hangs over the successful poet, 
and to dispel it is quite beyond his power. Long ago when he was at 
the High School, he made a sonnet and entitled it, "Our Wedlock." 
The editor of Lippincott's Magazine accepted the sonnet and paid for 
it, but the sonnet has never appeared. Cawein has written implor- 
ingly to the editor to send him back that early sonnet and take double 
the price originally paid for it, but the editor is obdurate. Some day 
the sword will drop: that crude piece of work, of which its author now 
thinks with horror, will appear over the same name which is printed on 
the title page of Moods and Memories, Days and Dreams and Red Leaves 
and Roses. This, and to attain his ideal of versification, appear to 
be his two great anxieties. The comparative indifiference of his native 
city can not be said to weigh heavily on his soul. But for this he has 
only himself to thank; if he had taken the trouble to buy himself a 
loose cloak, like that in the picture of Tennyson, and to keep his hair 
long, people would have known that a poet was among them. As it is, 
he has only gone on, regardless of surroundings, pursuing the highest 
ambition of a mortal — the ambition to be divine and to make a 
beautiful thing. 



1897, October 5, Courier-Journal: Henry Clay's Mother. 

Mr Zachary F. Smith read [before the Filson Club, October 4] 
an admirable sketch of The Mother of Henry Clay. . . . This 
was followed by an original poem on Nicholas Tomlin's and Thomas 
Bell's ride during the siege of Bryan's Station, August, 1782. The 
poem was by Madison Cawein and was read with fine effect. He 
styled the poem a description of "How They Brought Aid to Bryan's 
Station." It was a great poem and one that should win the author 
a warm place in the hearts of patriotic Kentuckians. [Mr. Cawein 
became a member of the Filson Club in 1892. He was then one of 
the youngest men in the Club. He took part in many of the general 
discussions of Kentucky history that followed the reading of the paper 
scheduled for the meeting, and every year or two, read by request, 
one of his poems before the Club.] 

96 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press 

1899, April II, Louisville Times: Queer Club formed in Louis- 
ville, Members limited to thirteen in each chapter. 
Only those eligible to "The Bleaters" who have never 
been truly loved. 

A unique club, which has been in existence in this city for over 
two years, will shortly be regularly incorporated under the name of 
"The Bleaters." The membership of a single chapter is limited to 
thirteen, and the sole qualification necessary for the eligibility of an 
applicant, beyond that of being desirable to the other members, is 
that he must be able to take soul-scorching oaths to the effect that 
no woman has ever seriously cared for him. If after he becomes a 
member and it is discovered that he has falsified in regard to the mat- 
ter, or if he becomes the object of serious affection on the part of any 
woman, he is ignominiously expelled. 

The order originated with Dr. A. Harris Kelly, Henry Coolidge 
Semple and J. Wallace Vaughan, who, on comparing notes one day, 
found that each had been the victim of a woman's wiles. They 
adjourned to a neighboring wet goods emporium to tell their troubles, 
and during the course of the evening resolved to band themselves 
together and formulate certain resolutions for future guidance and 
retaliation upon the fair sex. A little later, George S. Lowe found 
himself in a predicament similar to that of the first three and craved 
admission. It was accorded, and so the order grew. So many ap- 
plications for admission were received that it was decided to limit the 
membership to thirteen, chosen, of course, as being emblematic of the 
hard luck of the members. 

The origin of the name "The Bleaters" is one of the secrets of the 
order and cannot be divulged to the profane. Some months ago a 
regular organization was effected, by-laws formulated and a ritual 
adopted. The club now has ten members, three having been ex- 
pelled in disgrace for breaking over the restrictions. The following 
well-known young men are now members: Dr. A. Harris Kelly, 
J. Wallace Vaughan, Henry Coolidge Semple, Madison J. Cawein, 
Bert Finck, George S. Lowe, Dr. Harry S. Lee, James B. Brown, 
Allison Graves and T. Rodman Cartmell. Henry Coolidge Semple 
is the Hierarch. The following singularly appropriate names have 
been selected for the other officers: Cyclonic Windjammer, Dr. A. 
Harris Kelly; Melancholy Builder of Hard-Luck Poems, Madison J. 
Cawein; Exalted Handler of the Timid Grapes, J. Wallace Vaughan; 
Mild Excoriator of the Elusive Female, Dr. Harry S. Lee. 

The badge of the club is as unique as the club itself and is held 
sacred from woman's touch on pains of immediate expulsion of the 
pin's owner. The club has no regular meeting nights, but convenes 
whenever rumors of a member about to fall from grace need to be 
investigated. Meetings are not very far apart. Sometimes during 

97 



Madison Cawein 

the coming month a box party, followed by a dinner, will be given by 
the club. Each member will take the girl for whom he has striven 
hardest but cannot win. It is feared that the efforts of the young 
lady friends of the members to get invitations for this occasion may 
lead to numerous investigations of their disinterestedness. 



1901, January 2y, Courier-Journal: Madison Cawein. Infinite 

WORK, infinite PATIENCE. KeNTUCKY's PoET SINGS OF THE 
LANDSCAPE, WOODS, FIELDS AND STREAMS ABOUT US. MaKES 
TRUE AND GOOD SONGS THAT BRING HIM LAURELS AND AN INCOME. 

Of the few Louisville writers who are known to the world of 
letters, Madison Cawein, the poet, takes first rank in the minds of 
the critics. In fact, his work is of such quality that he is accorded 
three pages in Edmund Clarence Stedman's American Anthology, an 
honor which many an American poet much more popular in his time, 
is denied. In addition to this, Mr. William Dean Howells, whose 
critical faculty is not to be impugned, thus speaks of Mr. Cawein in 
"A Hundred Years of American Verse," an article in The North 
American Review for January: 

"What Bryant did was to make American nature habitable to 
American imagination, and in this way he doubtless pioneered what 
may be called, for want of a better word, the bucolic school of the 
West, whose spirit is most, though it was not earliest, recognizable 
in the work of John James Piatt, and which has found, in the tender 
humanity of James Whitcomb Riley and the sensuous susceptibility 
of Madison Cawein, diverse ultimations alike oblivious of their source." 

Mr. Madison Cawein belongs to Louisville as thoroughly as a 
man can. ^ He was born in the city and has resided here save a few 
years of his early life. These were passed on a farm beyond Pewee 
Valley near the South Fork of Harrod's Creek, and later he lived on a 
farm back of New Albany. His present residence is in a pleasant 
brick home on the corner of Market and Nineteenth streets, a house 
where comfort reigns and in which could easily be written poems that 
indicate a mind at ease and a good digestion. Mr. Cawein is easily ac- 
cessible and he makes an admirable host. His appearance does not 
at all suggest the poet. It is, in short, his conversation, when the 
light that comes into his face, that at once suggests what a theoso- 
phist would call "a dominant influence." 

Mr. Cawein was asked whether his poetic tendency was an in- 
heritance. He at once answered that he thought it was ; that, although 
his grandmother never wrote a line, she was fond of improvising 
poems in German to her delightful old-world garden, a place in which 
she loved to stay; that his mother was a great student, not of fiction, 
but of philosophy and theosophy_ and that she is a theosophist now. 

98 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press 

The impressions made by such environments on Mr. Cawein's mind 
have been very lasting and he also says that his poems invariably 
reflect some scenes connected with his childhood, the beautiful pastoral 
country about Harrod's Creek and the Southern Indiana knobs and 
valleys. Mr. Cawein's education began in a "little red schoolhouse" 
in Indiana and was finished in the city schools in Louisville. He 
graduated from the Male High School, now the Boys' High School, 
and since studied literature as a pleasure. 

Until he entered the Male High School he had not read much 
poetry, but when he came in contact with it he read Milton and 
Walter Scott — "beloved of boys" — and at once began to imitate these 
poets. His first published poem appeared in The Courier- Journal 
while he was in the Sophomore class of the High School, and between 
seventeen and eighteen years of age. It was called "Heat Lightning 
On the Ohio." [See the republished cHpping, page 102, from The 
Courier-Journal of July 12, 1885.] This was followed by other poems 
in the local papers which attracted attention and aided the young poet 
by the encouragement they gave him. While in the High School 
Mr. Cawein wrote a great deal, attempting epics and ballads. His 
study of Milton made him resolve ere he had read Tennyson, to throw 
the Arthurian legends into verse. He accomplished one, "Parsifal." 
It was written, however, after the metre of Scott's "Marmion." Be- 
fore going on, Mr. Cawein read Tennyson and at once burnt all his 
efforts. After Tennyson he took up a study of Shelley, and this re- 
duced him to despair. He compared his own work at eighteen with 
"Queen Mab" and it killed his ambition for a long time. In the 
meantime he studied Keats' poetry, but he resents any imputation that 
Keats' poetry influences him. He thinks that the poems of Shelley 
exercise a much more potent influence over him than those of Keats. 
If he has masters he declares them to be Shelley, Tennyson, and 
Browning. 

Mr. Cawein is one of the few men who have had the determina- 
tion to follow literature — and the worst paying branch of it — as a 
profession. He would not become a hack writer or achieve notoriety 
by newspaper verse. He wanted to be a poet and a poet he is. He 
says that at one time he held a clerical position and saved some money, 
which, by judicious investment, has made some more. In addition 
to this he has made poetry pay. His returns from his magazine verse 
for the year 1900 were about $100 per month. The magazines from 
which the checks came were the best in the country, representing 
Harper's, The Century, The Atlantic, The New Lippincott, Saturday 
Evening Post, The Smart Set, etc. While many writers, such as 
Munkittrick and several others, may make as much from verse in a 
year, their work is not poetry — and it is probable Mr. Cawein re- 
ceives more in cold cash for his elegant and artistic verse than any 
other American poet of the present hour. He writes what he desires 

99 



Madison Cawein 

to write. His Muse dictates to him and he fo'lows her sweet will. 
He expressed an honest scorn for any other method of writing. The 
song comes out of the soul which Mr. Madison Cawein fills with 
nature's secret lore during long, long walks over the fields and down 
by the creek ways, across the knobs and through the valleys of 
Kentucky and Southern Indiana. 

This is not the time or place in which to write a critical opinion 
of Mr. Cawein's verse. Better than that is a glimpse of the way he 
works and whence he draws the intricate knowledge of living, palpi- 
tant Nature, her smiles, tears, caprices, moods and secrets. There 
are many people who have passed Mr. Cawein in his quests, rambles, 
walks and never suspected that there went a singer whose heart was 
attuned to melodies unheard by others; whose eyes noted a thousand 
things others overlooked and in whose soul beauty dwelt and set its 
seal and glory on commonplace scenes. Mr. Cawein walks a great 
deal and there are few picturesque spots within twenty miles of Louis- 
ville that he does not know intimately and often. So that he is no 
house poet, but seeks his inspiration in the very scenes he so well 
paints. 

How does a poet work? Mr. Cawein believes in the dictum that 
"genius is the capacity for taking infinite pains." He is a great 
stickler for form. No poem goes out from the red house to the post 
box that does not represent careful labor. Mr. Cawein rises at 6:30 
o'clock each morning and reads some solid book for an hour or two. 
After breakfast he goes to his desk, in the privacy of his own room, 
and no one is allowed to disturb him. He writes slowly. Some lines 
are rewritten ten or twelve times. When a poem is finished he puts 
it away and lets it mellow. When he takes it out again he regards 
it with a cold and calculating eye and revises it. He then puts it 
aside for the second time. Every lovely lyric, seemingly so free, 
fresh and spontaneous, has had at least three rewritings before it 
goes out, carefully typewritten, to the publisher. 

Mr. Cawein has issued, since 1887, including compilations, re- 
vised editions, etc., some fifteen volumes of verse. He has written 
some prose, but has never offered it for publication. His publishers 
for the first volumes of his poems were John P. Morton & Company, and 
while these volumes netted him nothing financially, they placed him 
before the public, and aided him to that high place he now occupies. 
To one of these volumes, indeed, his present success is due. One of 
them, "Blooms of the Berry," was, in 1888, sent to Mr. William Dean 
Howells, who then had the "Editor's Study" of Harper's Magazine. 
Mr. Howells has since told the story of how his daughter. Miss Mildred 
Howells, then a mere girl, was rummaging over the books sent in, and 
by chance dipped into Mr. Cawein's modest little volume. She ran 
to her father all in a glow, exclaiming, "Here's a poet, here's a poet!" 
Such an introduction won Mr. Howells' careful attention and a most 

100 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press 

enthusiastic review. It was the first round in the ladder of fame, 
and Mr. Cawein has had at least a respectful consideration from 
critics ever since. 

Mr. Cawein best loves his longer poems, "Intimations of the 
Beautiful" and the long dramatic effort, "Accolon of Gaul," the 
Arthurian legend that somehow escaped the eagle eye of Tennyson. 
He also professes a tender attachment for a little lyric in his new 
volume [One Day and Another] to be published at once by Richard 
Badger, of Boston. In making a choice for the American Anthology, 
Mr. Stedman has chosen of Mr. Cawein's poems, "To a Wind-Flower," 
"The Rain Crow," "Ku Klux," "Proem of Myth and Romance," 
"The Creek Road" and several others 

Mr. Cawein's new book is to be "a lyrical eclogue," a love poem in 
five parts. It wi 1 be of peculiar form and composition, inasmuch as 
it will be composed of a number of lyrics, each complete in itself, but 
all having a connection. While no mention is made of Kentucky, it 
is a Kentucky poem; in fact, an idyl of Kentucky life. There are no 
titles to the lyrics, but stage directions at the top. It is a simple 
thing, Mr. Cawein says, but he considers it artistic. 

Anyone who has a sympathy with literary work will find Mr. 
Cawein a delightful companion. He believes in it as a species of 
divine mission. About him in his library are photographs and books 
and souvenirs of literary friends and coworkers. There are many 
well-known faces and autograph volumes. Mr. Cawein looks at them 
affectionately and smiles: 

"Yes, I have good friends everywhere," he says, "and some of 
them tell me I stand in my own light because I do not follow Thomas 
Nelson Page and John Fox, Junior, and James Lane Allen and go to 
New York. But I do not think I do. I am in my element here, 
where I know my Kentucky woods and fields and landscapes. I 
think I belong here, anyhow I am going to stay here. Let others 
go, but I am going to stay in Kentucky." — Elizabeth Cherry Waltz. 



Summer Lightning O'er The Ohio 
By Madison J. Cawein 
{Courier-Journal, July 12, 1885) 

[In the sketch quoted from The Courier -Journal of January 
21, 1894, is a statement to the effect that Mr. Cawein had entirely 
forgotten the name of his first published poem. In the article dated 
January 27, 1901, the title is given as "Heat Lightning on the Ohio." 
"Summer Lightning O'er the Ohio" is the earliest Cawein poem found 

101 



Madison Cawein 

in the old files of The Courier-Journal. He was twenty years old 
when this was published. It is probable that a few of his poems were 
printed in some other paper before this date.] 

Now Night, in purple pall, 

All dusty with white stars, 

Thro' Heaven's moonlit hall 
In pensive state her solemn march begins. 
Within the Western summer sky, 
Where turns yon lonely orb 
Of flame, a splash of fire, 
A crystal bud, its petals white expanding. 
The atmosphere domed, bubble clouds thick spins 
Of grotesque shapes, that form and die. 
Moon-flooded with a pearly garb ; 
Or grow a stately mosque, with spire on spire, 
In which aerial sylphs their worship make. 

And there, within those halls of vapors form'd. 

The dumb, white lightnings dance; 
As if the soul of Day, with fair Night charm'd, 

Sends forth swift glance on glance. 
Thus seem the speechless lightnings in the night, 

When Summer stamps the earth 
With mellow winds, that bring the Spring's delight 
Into a fruitful birth. 
To pulse within the dark blue skies. 
Where crystal mountain clouds arise 
In solemn state, cathedral-Wise, 
Beneath the dome of stars; 
Thro' which the astral-belted Night 
In Moon-wheel'd car swift takes her flight, 
With swarthy wand and dark bedight. 
And rules the dome of stars. 



1903, February 7, Louisville Times: A Kentucky Man of Letters. 

The personality of a poet is as interesting to the public as his 
songs. It wants to know something about him in private life — his 
looks, manners and habits. The poets of the good old times ran 
things wide open — everything went — to-day they wear straight 
jackets and walk on eggs. 

In George D. Prentice's day poets flourished in Kentucky like 
rabbits in Australia, and the Legislature was called on to offer a 

102 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press ^ 

bounty for their scalps. The whole State was so congested with them 
that in Frankfort you couldn't throw a bootjack out of the window at 
a cat without hitting at least a hundred "sweet singers." That's the 
name they go by in the little town amid the hills. But Prentice died 
and the poets were treated like the old straw hat when the fall sets 
in and people begin to get cold feet. It was just prior to the death of 
Mr. Prentice that Colonel Will S. Hays asked him: "Mr. Prentice, 
how did you like my last poem?" 

He said fervidly, "I thank God, Will, that it is your last." 

Time again, however, in this brazen age of song I have been 
asked: "What of Madison Cawein? Tell us something of the man 
personally." 

The sketches of him always tell where he was born and when he 
was born, but as to giving us any real notice of him, nixy. Now, be 
it understood, that I am his friend, and I am not going to tell anything 
mean on him. Sit still, Madison, I don't know anything mean. 
Even though a woman and having a friendship of years' standing I 
can swear I don't. Now! 

Some years ago, poems by an unknown writer made an occasional 
appearance in The Courier-Journal, that nest for incubating poets. 
The folks who knew a good thing when they saw it began asking: 
"Who writes these songs?" They found he was a modest, gifted young 
poet, whose heart was in his work. He lived in a lovely home at 
Nineteenth and Market and was as unassuming as one could well 
be. Like others of the guild, he had to bear the slings and arrows 
of adverse fortune by some of these hidebound Philistines who knew 
as much about poetry as a hen does of a hawk's nest. One of 
this class approached him one day. "I say. Mad," he began, "my 
sister is going to celebrate her birthday soon. Write me some jingles" 
— ye gods, jingles! — "and I'll pay you in bananas." I have won- 
dered since if Admetus paid Apollo in garden truck for herding his 
Shorthorns? 

But Cawein, though he did not write the jingles, wrote on. His 
first book. Blooms of the Berry, appeared in 1887. The public 
yawned. It didn't sound like "Casey at the Bat." There was no 
tidings of "How Salvator Won" or "Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night," 
so it was tabled like a resolution. 

But women are always discoverers. A perfect halo of petticoats 
hangs over Cawein's fame. The daughter of a big Eastern writer, 
who has immortalized the land of codfish and baked beans, unpacking 
some new books, came across Blooms of the Berry. "Oh, father," she 
cried, "only read this, it's lovely." He did read and then there came a 
big editorial on the book, which brought Mr. Cawein right down to 
the baldhead row of poets. The writer's daughter was to him what 
Isabella of Spain was to Columbus. Louisville woke up and chalked 
down the odds against him. Society sent cards and lion hunters got 

103 



Madison Cawein 

their guns, but Cawein was unmoved by all this. Unlike Lot's wife 
his head was never turned and from that day on he has continued to 
reside in his old home among his old friends and new. 

That same year he was the guest of Mr. Howells at Boston. 
One night, as he retired, he heard a knock at the door and saw an arm 
thrust in with a whisky bottle attachment. "No, thanks," said the 
poet, "I never drink whisky." He might as well have hurled a bomb 
outside. "Not — drink — whisky," gasped his host, "and from Ken- 
tucky!" Then the novelist came in the room and gazed long and 
anxiously on the face of the son of the "dark and bloody ground" who 
turned down his corn juice. This is authentic, and affidavits can be 
had about it. 

Heart failure was also one of the things that threatened his 
native city when he went to a bank to buy stock. As he handed over 
the money some one in the bank remarked: "That's Madison 
Cawein, the poet." Nuff said. The receiving teller called for help. 
Who ever heard of a poet in the State having money enough for a 
haircut, much less to buy bank stock? Some gold brick transaction 
was feared and there was an active demand for nerve tonics at the 
nearest drug store. 

Mr. Cawein is one of the few Southern poets who has been made 
much over in the East. As a rule, the Southern brother who goes 
on to the place from which only three wise men came (and that 
proved their wisdom) is asked to sit on the mourners' bench as a 
horrid example or go way back and sit down. Cawein shared a 
different fate, but he loathes the noise and glare of a big city. As he 
once said to me when he went to Chicago: "I got out in front of my 
hotel on the following morning, heard all the roar of the wild beasts 
of the mart, held my head in my hands and took the next train home." 

What he loves is nature. He is her sweetheart, so to speak, for 
the old girl has had more than you could shake a stick at. She is one 
of those flower-faced coquettes who smiles on all alike and has a kiss 
on her lips for every fellow who comes down the boulevard. He has 
courted her in the woods where the wild flowers hold their annual 
convention of light and sweetness. He knows the Indiana knobs by 
heart, though the gang of sweethearts who go over there and pre-empt 
the ground has nearly driven him away. He has written of the old 
cemetery on Jefferson Street — of its dim walks, freckled with sun and 
shade, its moldering tombs and the memories of rose and rue, history 
and romance, all the pathetic tragedies of life and love its limits 
enshrine. He has immortalized the old farm home near Jeffersontown 
owned by his family [i 891 -1903] and there is an ancient haunted 
house in the Indiana green gloom of woods that has inspired some 
of his most charming poems. 

His has been the friendship without envy of all the poets of the 
country. Ahem, some of the Eastern gentlemen are a little bit sour 

104 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press 

at present because Mr. Edmund Gosse has said he never heard of 
them, but here in the South, Riley, Wilson, Rule, O'Malley, Stanton, 
Rice, Allen — all the lay-out, long on brains and short on cash — have 
laid a rose of love at his feet. He is just a kindly, lovable gentleman, 
unaffected by flattery, the same good friend as of old, loyal and true, 
but the cap stone is still lacking to his success. No racehorse has 
been named for him in Kentucky. Perhaps, it is as well — racehorses 
named for poets generally take to their beds and have to be sold to 
pull drays. — Elvira S. Miller. 



1903* June 5, Courier- Journal: McKelvey-Cawein. 

The marriage of Mr. Madison Cawein and Miss Gertrude Foster 
McKelvey took place at 7 o'clock yesterday morning at St. Paul's 
Episcopal Church, in St. James Court [adjoining Central Park]. 
The ceremony was performed by the Reverend Dr. Reverdy Estell. 
The wedding was an unusually impressive one. The church was softly 
lighted. There was no music and no attendants. Only the near 
relatives of Mr. Cawein and Miss McKelvey were present. The 
bride was dressed in a dark blue traveling dress, with a white silk 
blouse, and wore a black pattern hat with gold trimmings. The 
bride and groom left at 8.20 o'clock for Denver and Manitou Springs 
where the honeymoon will be spent. They made a brief stop in 
St. Louis last night where they were entertained at the Planter's 
Hotel by Mr. and Mrs. R. E. Lee Gibson. Mr. and Mrs. Cawein 
will return to Louisville in a month. 



1908, November 14, Courier-Journal: The Louisville Literary 
Club. 

[The Louisville Literary Club was founded September 3, 1908. 
At its first regular meeting Mr. Cawein was elected an honorary mem- 
ber. He attended many of the meetings, and frequently took part in 
the general discussion that followed the scheduled lecture on the read- 
ing of a prepared paper. He appeared on four set programs : November 
9, 1908, "Modern Poetry;" November 27, 1911, "Nicholas Lenau's 
Life and Works;" February 24, 1913, "Some Kentucky Poems;" April 
13, 1914, "Poets Symposium." Reports of the second and fourth 
programs are printed elsewhere in this chapter. The following per- 
tains to his first appearance before the Louisville Literary Club] : 

The Louisville Literary Club is a new organization in Louisville 
and one which has a reason for its existence. Its present limit of 
membership is 200. Men of all professions and ranks, as well as pro- 
fessed men of letters, are eligible. While its name is "Literary Club," 

105 



Madison Cawein 

its range of topics is by no means confined to literature, but may 
embrace anything that affects the welfare of the city of Louisville, of 
the State of Kentucky, or the country at large. This club is a sort 
of safety-valve where, without cut-and-dried programmes but under 
intelligent and orderly method, men may voice their opinions. It is 
not a board of trade; it is not a commercial club; it is not a political 
club, but it is an assemblage where any of the topics proper in such 
organizations would not be out of order. It may deal, too, with 
music and the arts, legal reforms, political movements, matters affect- 
ing general health and welfare. In fact, its scope might be stretched 
to cover as many things as the commerce clause of the United States 
Constitution. Such bodies as this exist in other cities and it has been 
found to be a mark of a thriving and vigorous community to have 
them when supported by a live interest so that free and public 
expression may be afforded to the citizens. 

On last Monday evening, however, the meeting confined itself 
to a strictly literary programme, dealing with poetry. The president, 
Mr. Ed. J. McDermott, presided, and not only happily introduced 
the speakers of the evening, but showed himself in no small degree 
acquainted with the subject for discussion. 

The first speaker was Mr. Madison Cawein, Kentucky poet and 
world poet. While the appearance of Mr. Cawein is familiar to his 
fellow-citizens of Louisville and to numerous acquaintances in New 
York and the East, some present notes concerning him may be of 
interest to those who do not know him among his contemporaries, as 
well as to those who, coming after us, shall also love poets. Mr. 
Cawein is of medium height or less with rather broad shoulders, 
though slender. He has a well-marked aquiline nose and prominent 
features. His not abundant hair is grayer than it should be at his 
years; his brows are well marked and his eyes are dark and full of a 
brilliant gentleness. He reads his own poems with an elocution not al- 
ways perfect, yet in a more interesting way than anyone else could read 
them. His voice is sonorous and pleasing and full of expression. 
When he reads those delightful, droll poems for children, of which he 
is about to publish a book, one gets the very human, humorous father 
and elder brother of his own little boy. When he reads those poems 
that deal with the sublimated essence of beauty he seems to embody 
the ideal poet as he pours forth winged words that carry one far toward 
beauty's inaccessible home. 

Prefacing his article by the very true observation that no one 
can hope to keep up with all the literature of the day, Mr. Cawein 
went into a short discussion of the comparative permanency of lyrics 
and poetic dramas, giving the palm decidedly to the former, although 
he noted the immediate and current revival in the poetical drama, so 
well exemplified in the work of Stephen Phillips and other modern 
writers. Mr. Cawein quite well sustained his proposition, but whether 

106 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press 

it would meet with general agreement or not, it cannot be denied that 
his ideals were stated with clearness and force. His paper is well 
worth printing. He then read a few unpublished poems, dealing 
with not only outer nature, but with human subjects. He also read 
four or five poems for children, among others notably the one con- 
cerning the little girl who was too good, and one which contains the 
utterances of the little boy who wondered where he went when he 
went to sleep. 

Judge Charles Seymour, having been called on by the president, 
made a short address, humorous and appreciative, sustaining by 
quotation and example Mr. Cawein's theory of the greater immortal- 
ity of the short lyric over other forms of poetry. Professor Marcus 
Allmond, the well-known educator, also read with animation several 
short poems of his own, written with spirit and interest. 

The next regular speaker upon the programme was Dr. Henry A. 
Cottell, the laborious, learned physician, who rests himself with 
music and poetry. He drew a parallel between the poets of the classic 
age of England and the poets who write in English in the present day. 
He selected the sonnet in order to illustrate his address and with an 
astonishing memory recited sonnets from the time of Sidney and 
Spencer, Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth, down to the present 
day, delivering his favorite sonnets with great feeling and dramatic 
force. 

The meeting, which was an open meeting and well attended by 
both ladies and men, adjourned shortly after lo o'clock, according 
to the rules of the club. 



1 910, October 2, Louisville Herald: Madison Cawein, a poet and 

A HUMAN MAN. He WRITES CLASSIC POETRY BETTER THAN 
ALMOST ANYBODY ELSE. He LOVES HIS HOME AND FAMILY. 

The Stock Market interests him — he works, tirelessly 

AND systematically, GETTING HIS INSPIRATIONS FROM FIELD 
AND FLOWER — KeNTUCKY's FOREMOST NATURE PAINTER. 

"A man's a man for a' that," said Burns, but somehow the poet 
has always been out of count. Poets are so unmistakably different! 
Men? Perhaps. The mere word suggests antics, disheveled hair, 
wild eyes and collarless throats! Those who are born to interpret 
the stars and the writing on the wall — who are bound, if they are to 
sustain the title, to starve, suffer, yearn, seek and toil up the mountain 
of truth all the days of their lives — small wonder that they form a 
class apart and that ordinary men are distrustful of them. 

In Louisville there is a poet today. Beware! In spite of his 
collar, his tranquil eye — in spite of the conventions he observes and 
the garnishings of civilization he wears — he is a poet. Even at this 

107 



Madison C aw e in 

late day there is a man about who prefers the woods to an automobile 
and a fire-fly to an electrolier! Collar or no collar, he must be a 
poet! 

Madison Cawein, the nature-poet of Kentucky, whose new book, 
The Shadow Garden, has recently created a stir in the world of litera- 
ture, has never considered himself as a man apart. He is easy to 
approach, and quite ready to talk of poetry, to explain how he writes 
it, to discuss it as a man of skill might discuss his profession. This 
is unusual for a poet. They have all been more or less "stand-ofifish" 
about bringing the Divine Fire into the light of day. Not so Mr. 
Cawein; to hear him talk is to realize that poetry, like everything else, 
depends on system, industry and a clear head. 

"Every morning at half-past six," he says, "I begin work. There 
is something in the freshness of the air and the bright sunlight that 
makes work easy then." 

"But you can't write poetry every morning, can you?" 

Mr. Cawein smiled indulgently. "Why, no! I shouldn't try 
it; it depends. Now, this morning, I am translating Lenau." 

Mr. Cawein rose, went over to the typewriter and rolled off a 
sheet. "I've always been partial to translation — and it's the best 
possible exercise for a poet. To be able to interpret the mood of a 
poem in another language, to catch the very breath and color of the 
words — I regard it quite as much a work of art as an original poem." 

The following is a sample of Mr. Cawein's translation; the ex- 
quisite little poem of Lenau has been, as it were, breathed upon and 
intensified: 

Sombre 

A gloomy thought, a dream of dread and doubt, 
One sombre cloud the face of Heaven crosses ; 

Within the wind the bush is whirled about 
As on his couch the sick-in-spirit tosses. 

Then Heaven mutters low one word of thunder, 
Her moody lashes winking rainy grey. 

As wink dark eyes when teardrops gather under, 

And from the storm's wild eyelids darts one ray. 

Now o'er the moor creeps up a chilly shower, 

And stealthy mists steal down the forestland ; 

Dark Heaven, lost in grief, like some sad flower, 
Lets fall the red sun wearily from her hand. 

The remaining portion of Mr. Cawein's day is also systematically 
mapped out. Immediately after breakfast, he returns to the library, 

108 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press 

where he corrects proof, or copies poems on the typewriter for an hour. 
Mr. Cawein, Hke all modern men of letters, has realized the necessity 
of doing typewriting "at home." At sharp half-past nine, after a 
brief romp with Preston, the boy of the house, Mr. Cawein walks to 
town to have a look at the "market." There are people, of course, 
who will wonder why a poet should be interested in stocks and bonds. 

Bulls and bears, fluctuations in cola, copper or wheat, what have 
they to do with cobwebs and moonshine? Possibly nothing, and yet 
modern writers like modern people of all professions have realized that 
an adjustment to life is somehow necessary and that even an artist may 
work better if he has plenty to eat. So, Mr. Cawein watches the 
"bobbing up and down of the stocks" with a lively interest. 

"A poet has to make a living, too," says Mr. Cawein, "and, of 
course in these days, poetry hardly does it alone. I know a doctor 
who finding his son writing poetry one day tore up the sonnet on the 
spot, with the admonition: 'Idiot, don't ever let me catch you writing 
this stuff again — do you want to end in the poor-house?' You see, that 
father had an understanding of the roads that lead to prosperity. As 
a matter of fact, the explanation is simple enough. People — that is, 
the broad majority — people that walk on the streets and go to the 
picture shows, are not interested in poetry. Too many easy things are 
at hand, too many distractions and diversions. You see, poetry is not 
a diversion — and it is not easy. You cannot substitute 'Paradise 
Lost' for an automobile ride, nor 'The Ring and the Book' for a vaude- 
ville performance. They want 'something doing.' In the competi- 
tion between the flying machine and pentameter verse, I'm afraid the 
victory for the machine would be overwhelming." 

After an hour or so spent at the Exchange, Mr. Cawein goes over 
to the Pendennis Club, answers his letters, reads magazines and 
papers, chats with his friends on politics and interesting questions of 
the hour. In the afternoon, however, he does his real work. This 
is his favorite time of the day for composition. To a lover of nature 
no hours are more inspiring than the drowsy ones of the afternoon, 
and in summer Mr. Cawein invariably spends them in the woods. 
This is perhaps not due to inclination alone; like all students of his 
subject, he has realized that one must live with nature to know her. 

"So every afternoon I go out to the 'Haunts of Pan,' " says Mr. 
Cawein. "I call my favorite bit of woodland by this name, although it 
is only a stretch of wonderful forest on Kenwood Hill a few miles 
south of the city. But the moment I enter it, it is so deep and green 
and still, I could believe that all the satyrs and sprites in the world 
were alive and hiding about in the trees and shrubbery." 

On being asked if he really wrote poetry in the woods, Mr. Cawein 
took out a note book of miniature proportions, and turning pages full 
of indistinguishable hieroglyphics, paused at one on which the title 
"To a Dragon Fly" could be made out. 

109 



Madison C aw e in 

"Yes," he went on. "It is easier for me to write in the woods; 
somehow it all comes to me. When you are indoors it is different. 
I have always worked in the open air from the time I was a 
young boy." 

Mr. Cawein is fond of telling an amusing incident that happened 
one day, when he was writing in the "Haunts of Pan." "It had been 
a sultry afternoon," he said, "and the West had been looking so 
gloomy, that it gave me the idea of writing a poem to the storm. I 
decided on my metre and started to work. I was just in the right 
mood, and in a short while had several stanzas done. Suddenly 
I felt someone touch me on the shoulder. Now, all the while I had 
been working in this spot no one had found me out — so I was a bit 
startled. I turned about and there was the park guard, looking 
mightily concerned. 

" 'Why, mister,' he said, 'I seen you come up, and I wasa-waitin' 
for you to come down. Can't yer see there's a hard storm comin' — 
you'd a better be gettin' down, stid a-waitin' here to be struck by 
lightning.' 

"I told him I wasn't at all afraid of the storm, but he would stand 
there talking until finally I had to go away. And I've never been 
able to finish the poem," concluded Mr. Cawein. "That guard snuffed 
it right out, the mood would not come back." 

It has always been a matter of interest to the laity to know just 
how poets, painters and sculptors do their work, and what methods 
they employ. As a rule each man has a different way, characteristic 
of him and nobody else. Some writers, as, for instance, Byron, must 
toss things off at a white heat, others, like Hawthorne, are unmerci- 
fully slow. Again, a poet will be found who must finish a poem at 
one sitting, or else lose the thread of it forever. 

Mr. Cawein does not belong to this latter class. Although the 
peculiarity of writing his poetry in the woods is decidedly charac- 
teristic, still he can work on a poem for a long time and in many 
different places. In fact all of his poems have been polished and 
rewritten in his own study. The sketch — the rhythm and idea are all 
thrashed out in the forest, but the slow polishing, and careful chang- 
ing of phrases, is a process that goes on for many weeks after the 
poem has been struck off. 

Mr. Cawein has a lively appreciation of anecdotes, and will 
occasionally tell stories of his debut into literature, which are full of 
humor and charm. There never has been, since the world began, a 
writer of note who has achieved success at once, and Mr. Cawein was 
no exception to the rule. Although LippincoU's Magazine accepted 
a sonnet of his on "Wedlock," while he was still a boy in the High 
School, subsequent efforts were frequently rejected. 

"It is impossible for a young writer to get into the magazines 
until he has obtained some kind of notice," says Mr. Cawein. 

110 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press 

"I had no success whatever until I brought out my first volume of 
poems in 1887. This was entitled The Blooms oj the Berry, and it was 
fortunate enough to attract the favorable criticism of William Dean 
Howells. In a review of it published in Harper's he called attention 
to several lines and ideas that pleased him greatly. So then I had an 
entry into Harper's after which other magazines accepted my poems 
also." 

When he was asked if these early poems were still to be had, 
Mr. Cawein seemed much amused. 

"No, indeed," he said, "I bought up every copy I could find and 
burned it. Package after package I brought home from the book 
company, and fed with relish to the flames. We kept the house warm 
for a month on poetry." [The publishers, however, laid aside a 
number of copies.] 

If it is an unusual thing for a poet to be honored in his own land, 
it is even more unusual for him to be respected in his own family. 
Poets are apt to be black sheep, until some good hundred years after 
they are dead. Once again Mr. Cawein is unusually blessed. In 
honor of Mrs. Cawein, whose beauty is well known and whose ardent 
cultivation of the muses has won her many literary friends, he has 
written some of his loveliest poems, while the boy, Preston, now six 
years old, has been the occasion of the whole series of delightful fairy 
tales published in The Giant and the Star. 

"At first," said Mr. Cawein, "I had no intention of writing these 
down. But Preston pestered me so for stories, — 'make-up-stories, 
father,' — that I had to invent a whole cycle. One day I was speaking 
about it to Dr. Henry Van Dyke, who said he had the same experi- 
ence with his daughter. We exchanged part of these fairy tale 
series, and he advised me to write mine down. 

"I began the work in prose, just as I tell them to Preston, but 
finally I had such a desire to put them into verse that I did so. Now 
Preston has ideas of his own about stories. He is one of the severest 
critics I have. He knows at once if a story is worth anything. So, 
as the fairy tales were finished I submitted them to him. If he failed 
to be interested in a story, I would leave it out." 

The Giant and the Star, as it stands today, is a book for all children, 
because it has been proven and tested by a real child. Preston's 
attitude to the book, when it was finally printed, was unique. He 
declared that it was his book, and that Mr. Ralph T. Hale, of Small, 
Maynard & Company (the publisher), was not to give them to boys 
he did not know. But finally, after distributing some twenty copies 
among his friends, Preston consented to let Mr. Hale offer the others 
for sale. 

The house of Mr. Cawein, in St. James Court, is in many respects 
characteristic of the poet, and the library, the sanctum sanctorum, 
with its well-chosen books, good paintings and comfortable "lived-in" 

111 



Madison C awe in 

atmosphere, is a delightful place to spend a morning. Mr. Cawein 
himself is a great reader, and the books that surround him speak the 
man of cultivated, literary tastes. 

"But I am reading a book now that has been getting me stirred 
up regularly twice a day," said he. "In the very title the author, 
Hudson Maxim, writes himself down seven times a fool. Now, listen 
to this, 'The Science of Poetry.' Just what is the world coming to, 
I wonder? It isn't possible to speak of the science of poetry. But 
do you know what this man claims? He says that any person of 
fairly good intellect, who has the patience and desire, can write 
poetry that will equal Milton's or Shakespeare's. Well, it isn't worth 
getting excited about. Poets cannot be made," Mr. Cawein said, 
"they must be born, and the man who talks about the science 
of poetry as if he were talking of an engine or a gun, is utterly 
ridiculous." 

Perhaps in the city of Louisville today, there is no man of letters 
who has achieved wider fame than Madison Cawein. Only recently 
he has been made an Oversea's Member of the Authors' Club of 
London, an organization including the most famous authors of today. 
Thomas Hardy is now the President, having succeeded the late 
George Meredith. Mr. Cawein is also a member of the National 
Institute of Arts and Letters in New York, an organization similar 
to the London one, but with headquarters in America. 

People of the most varying individualities have taken an interest 
in his poems, and the most exacting critics of nature-poetry, including 
Theodore Roosevelt, have expressed their unreserved approbation of 
it. To quote Mr. Roosevelt's own words [from The Outlook, July 
23,1910]: 

"Today there are many who delight in our birds, who know their 
songs, who keenly love all that belongs to out-of-door life. For 
instance, Madison Cawein and Ernest McGaffey, have for a number 
of years written of our woods and fields, of the birds and flowers, as 
only those can write, who join the love of nature, the gift of observa- 
tion, and the gift of description." 

In The Thrush, a London magazine devoted to poetry, the 
following is to be found : 

"Mr. Madison Cawein's New Poems is far the most important 
in our group. His former volume, Kentucky Poems, shows that he 
seeks inspiration in his native land. He is undoubtedly a poet; 
there is grave fancy and a distinctive charm about his work, and often 
a serious depth of feeling, which is not passionate, but always calm 
and restrained. His subjects and metres are very varied; he is 
always a careful craftsman, with an ear for the music of words." 

Mr. Cawein's new volume of plays. The Shadow Garden, is a 
rarely beautiful illustration of the spirit of modern poetry. Com- 
bined with the old and eternal virtues of truth, strength and sim- 

112 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press 

plicity, there is a subtle, delicate atmosphere of other-world beauty, 
peculiarly characteristic of Kentucky's poet. The volume has met 
with such high praise that Mr. Cawein feels encouraged to continue 
his work in the dramatic field. — Hor tense Flexner. 



191 1, November 28, Louisville Herald: Madison Cawein thinks 

NiCHOLAUS LeNAU RANKS NEXT TO HeINE AS POET ReADS 

SOME OF HIS TRANSLATIONS IN LECTURE TO LiTERARY ClUB. 

Nicholaus Lenau, Germany's nature poet, ranks next to Heine 
in the opinion of Madison Cawein who made an address on Lenau's 
life and works before the Louisville Literary Club, at its regular 
meeting last night in the Assembly Room of the Louisville Free Public 
Library. Despite the rainy weather more than 150 members were 
present. 

Mr. Cawein read more than twenty translations he had made of 
the poet's works and said that they contained more metre than those 
of any other German poets. Lenau was born in 1802 and died in 
1850. Following Mr. Cawein, Judge Charles B. Seymour read a 
translation of one of Lenau's poems. Edward A. Jonas also par- 
ticipated in a discussion of his works. 

1912, March 26, Louisville Times: Poet is honored by many 
FRIENDS. Anniversary of Blooms of the Berry basis of tribute 
TO Cawein. Loving cup is presented. Offerings of verse 
come from all points, and here also. 

Vivisected, analyzed, rehabilitated, rejuvenated by hundreds of 
friends and admirers at an open meeting of the Louisville Literary 
Club, held at the assembly room of the Louisville Free Public Library, 
last evening, in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publi- 
cation of his first volume of poems and also of his forty-seventh 
birthday which was last Saturday, Madison Cawein enjoyed — if that 
is the term — an experience that seldom has been the lot of a maker 
of verses worth while, in his lifetime. The celebration was made the 
occasion for the gift to Mr. Cawein by the members of the Louisville 
Literary Club, and Mr. Cawein's friends, of a handsome silver loving 
cup suitably inscribed. The presentation was made by Horace C. 
Brannin, president of the Club. 

After four hours of adulation, not unmixed with gentle fun- 
making at his expense, by his more intimate friends, it is not surprising 
that Mr. Cawein should have said, when there was no longer any 
opportunity for escape : 

"I feel just like the little boy who, having done something for 
which he feared to be punished, tried to hide himself in the attic or 

113 



Madison C aw e in 

some place, but, being discovered, and unwillingly brought before all 
the company, instead of meeting with punishment was treated to ice 
cream and cake and presented with some wonderful toy. Speech is 
so inadequate to express all that one feels on an occasion of this sort 
that I can not attempt to put into words the gratitude which is due 
the Literary Club and all the participants in the symposium ex- 
tended me this evening in honor of my work. Let me say, merely, 
that I am simply overwhelmed by your consideration and the praise 
bestowed upon my poetry, and by this beautiful gift, which, as it were, 
crowns the event. All that I hope for is that in the years to come I 
may never disappoint one of you and always write up to the standard 
of excellence which you have proclaimed for me. I thank you." 

Dr. Henry A. Cottell presided as chairman last evening and 
many tributes from friends of Mr. Cawein among the distinguished 
writers of the day were read in addition to the numbers contributed 
by Louisville people. Interspersed with the verse, readings and ap- 
preciations were musical numbers — songs written by the poet and 
set to music by his wife or other musicians. In all, the programme 
comprised forty-two items and beginning at 7:45 o'clock did not end 
until nearly midnight. 

"The religious element in Mr. Cawein's poetry" was the subject 
of the first offering by the Right Rev. Charles E. Woodcock, who said 
that Mr. Cawein has two elements which qualify him as a preacher; 
first, that "he need not be ashamed of his tools," and next, "the 
ornament of a meek and quiet mind." He said that no man can 
preach more inspiring sermons than are to be found in Mr. Cawein's 
verse. 

"Rain," was read by former Governor Augustus E. Willson, as 
illustrative of Mr. Cawein's powers of description and as indicative 
of the spirit inspiring the work. Judge Charles B. Seymour read one 
Greek and one German poem with Mr. Cawein's translations to show 
his versatility and merit as a linguist. Albert S. Brandeis told how 
as a realist, Mr. Cawein takes the simple things of nature and makes 
them glow with inextinguishable beauty. 

As expressive of "the divine discontent" characteristic of great- 
ness, Lieutenant Govenor Edward J. McDermott read Mr. Cawein's 
"Ambition," and went on to say that Mr. Cawein is loved and honored 
as a citizen and patriot as well as a poet. Rabbi H. G. Enelow, 
speaking on the "Witchery of Poetry," said that it really is Mr. 
Cawein who "discovered Kentucky in revealing to blinder eyes her 
beauties of dawns and sunsets, her forests and her streams." Dr. 
Charles Ewell Craik read "A Prayer for Old Age," and declared that 
if all sermons breathed such spiritual beauty and inspiration there 
would be no need for a "Religion Forward Movement." 

The Reverend Charles S. Gardner discussed the Grecian feeling 
for the beautiful as revealed in Mr. Cawein's poems, saying that it 

114 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press 

was in no way inconsistent with his Christian consistency. Dr. W. 
Francis Irwin and Reverend Dr. Aquilla Webb told of personal as- 
sociations with the poet and his human side. Mrs. Evelyn Snead 
Barnett, Judge George Du Relle and Professor Reuben Post Halleck 
also spoke. Professor Halleck held in his hand a little, red-bound 
volume from which, he said, Mr. Cawein, as a pupil in the Male High 
School, had his first larger glimpse of poesy. 

William J. Dodd, humorously discussed "Praeterita," which, he 
said, he had read after being assured the title was not a lady's name. 
Cale Young Rice expressed his deep appreciation of the work of Mr. 
Cawein, saying that he had lived the poetic life for twenty-five years 
at a time of the world when it was most difficult. Other speakers 
were the Reverend Dr. Edgar Y. MuUins, Miss Margaret Steele 
Anderson and Dr. Fred L. Koontz. Musical numbers were con- 
tributed by Miss Sarah McConathy, Miss Josephine McGill and 
Miss Elsie Hedden. 

Among the contributions of friends read by Secretary Charles A. 
Lehmann, of the Literary Club, were the following: James Whitcomb 
Riley, William Dean Howells, Robert E. Lee Gibson, Lucien V. 
Rule, Charles Hamilton Musgrove, Edward A. Jonas and Daniel E. 
O'SuUivan. 



1912, March 27, Louisville Herald — Editorial: A Happy Occasion. 

The splendid and spontaneous tribute paid to Madison Cawein 
by hundreds of his fellow-citizens Monday night was worthy of its 
object and a credit to those who participated in it. 

In these days of politics and commercialism we are too prone to 
neglect those who minister to the mind and soul the things of beauty. 
We allow our singers and our artists to live among us unrecognized 
until their sudden passing leaves a sense of loss that awakens us to 
the sin and folly of our indifference. 

That Louisville has voiced in some adequate measure its appre- 
ciation of one of its sons, whose name is known throughout the world 
as an interpreter of nature's manifold charm, is an occasion for thank- 
fulness. It discloses to us the fact that we have the spirit and the 
disposition to set store by the finer things of life, and to honor those 
who, in the voice of poetry, speak to heart and imagination. 

Madison Cawein has done much for Kentucky. He has given us 
a right to hold up our heads in the congregation of the elect. Where 
beauty is loved for beauty's sake; where the soul kindles at the thought 
of sunrise and bird-song, burgeoning trees and April-flooded brooks, 
where fancy wings its flight and revels in the dreamland of poesy, the 
name of Kentucky is loved and spoken softly for the sake of Cawein, 

115 



Madison Cawein 

this child of magic vision who has opened so many eyes to the hidden 
joys, so many ears to the secret music of the wonder-world by which 
we are surrounded. 

We are glad that Madison Cawein should know, now in the prime 
of his manhood, at the very acme of his strong, sweet singing, that 
Louisville loves and honors him. It is good for him to know it. It 
is good for us to have told him so. 



1913, April 26, Louisville Herald: Many see Cawein bust un- 
veiled. Library halls are crowded as bust of Ken- 
tucky POET IS presented BY LOUISVILLE LITERATURE ClUB. 

Writer's work given high praise by speakers. Reverend 
E. L. Powell, acting for Mayor Head, receives gift 
for city. 

The rotunda of the Louisville Free Public Library was trans- 
formed for an hour yesterday afternoon into a chapel, while the 
Louisville Literature Club presented a bronze bust of Madison Cawein 
to the Library and the people of Louisville. The hall was filled with 
the literary public of the city, and the stairways on either side of the 
rotunda, as well as the upper gallery, were crowded with appreciators 
of the Kentucky poet. At the base of the eastern stairway stood the 
veiled bust surrounded by spring flowers. A piano in front of the 
catalogue completed the transformation of the Library for the time. 
Work was suspended and the employes grouped themselves behind 
the central desk while the exercises were being held. 

Miss Alice Bouche, vice president of the Literature Club, acting 
for Miss Florence Danforth, president, who is now in New York, 
was in charge of the program. Two poems by Madison Cawein were 
read by Miss Ethel Allen Murphy, after which John Peter Grant 
sang two of his lyrics which have been put to music. Mrs. John L. 
Woodbury made the speech of presentation. 

"This is not the time nor place for a detailed appreciation of 
Mr. Cawein's work," said Mrs. Woodbury. "The people who are 
here today, as well as the Literature Club, are aware of the contri- 
bution Mr. Cawein has made to modern poetry. The appealing 
beauty of his work has won for him a place among the distinguished 
poets of this country and Europe. 

"Nothing just like this we are doing here today has ever been 
done in Louisville, and I do not know that it has been done in any 
other city. The poets, as a rule, have gained scant praise while they 
were living. But we wish to honor our own prophet, and so 
prove the exception to the old proverb. We wish him to knowhow 
deeply we appreciate what he has brought to us, and to tell this to 
him — not say it about him. 

116 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press 

"We have met with a great deal of helpful criticism, and some 
that has not been helpful, while we have been working together to make 
our dream come true. I have brought with me today some letters 
from the distinguished people who have been glad to co-operate with 
the Literature Club." 

Mrs. Woodbury then read a number of letters from well-known 
American men of letters, praising the poetry of Madison Cawein. 
William Morton Payne, of The Dial, James Whitcomb Riley, Harrison 
S. Morris, Wilbur Dick Nesbit and many others testified to their high 
opinion of the Kentucky poet, and spoke in approbation of the Liter- 
ature Club's project. A letter from the late Albert Brandeis, who 
was deeply interested in the plan, was also read. 

The bust was then formally presented, and unveiled by Preston 
Cawein, son of the poet, and his small niece, Katherine Girdler. It is 
in bronze, the work of J. L. Roop, of Indianapolis, an interesting and 
striking piece of portraiture. 

The Reverend E. L. Powell, acting for Mayor Head, received 
the bust. "It is embarrassing to accept this beautiful gift," said Dr. 
Powell, "the more so, since I am not prepared. The reason that the 
Mayor is not here to speak for himself is a simple one. Plain, un- 
adulterated fright has kept him away. An extempore speech is not 
fit to express the gratitude of the Library for this gift of the Literature 
Club. I was thinking, as I listened here, of the eminent fitness of this 
setting. It is right that this man, who has come into the royalty in 
his beautiful ministry, should be crowned in this place. Rather the 
laurel for his brow than the epitaph for his tomb. The latter has 
usually been the reward of the poets. 

"Could anything be sweeter than the approval of one's friends 
and neighbors for the work that is well done, for noble effort suc- 
cessfully made in spiritual things? Mr. Cawein is a poet because he 
could not help it. His work has won nation-wide — world-wide — 
fame for him. Truly, he is not a prophet without honor in his own 
country. I congratulate Mr. Cawein on having come into his kingdom 
here and now. We are living in a precedent-breaking age — and this 
precedent we break today is broken magnificently and gloriously. 

"Why should we wait until a man has died to bestow the crown? 
Why should we withhold the reward until too late? I think there 
is no reason — and I am glad the Literature Club has taken this op- 
portunity to do the beautiful and appropriate thing. The poet is 
the finest man in the world — we could not get along on this prosy, 
every-day earth without him. He is bound to be good — bound to see 
the white presences among the hills. We need him. 

"And so, in behalf of the Public Library and the City of Louisville, 
whose mayor I represent, I accept with gratitude and deep appre- 
ciation, this bust of Madison Cawein, our neighbor, friend and fellow 
citizen — our greatest living poet of America, and perhaps of the world." 

117 



Madison Cawein 

Following the exercises an informal reception in honor of Mr. 
Cawein was held while the bust was examined by those to whom it 
had been presented. 

[The Louisville Literature Club was organized in October, 1882. 
Its membership is confined to women. It is an afternoon club, and a 
charter member of the Kentucky Federation of Women's Clubs.] 



1913, April 26, Courier-Journal: Mr. Cawein in Bronze. 

Yesterday's unveiling of a bust of Madison Cawein in the Public 
Library of his native city was in many respects the most important 
event in the literary history of the city of his loyal afifections. Of 
course, some may debate the point in favor of the fact of his birth in 
Louisville — an event at least happily preliminary to any justification 
for such a bust. 

However, quibbles and quiddities aside, the bust is a praise- 
worthy tribute and one highly merited by a poet who while voyaging 
afar in realms of ideal beauty has been so fondly and faithfully aware 
of our Kentucky loveliness at his door. 

Meanwhile as the bust now takes its place reminding those who 
enter that Louisville has produced this poet it has been pleased thus 
to honor, it should more remind younger and older readers of the 
other monument to Mr. Cawein within the Library. On the shelves 
his books stand — aere perennius. The bust revealing the outer sem- 
blance of the man, recalls the poet; the books are the poet, the man 
at his best; to them young Louisvillians and unknowing elders should 
be directed for further and genuine acquaintance with the poet whom 
the citizens yesterday so signally honored. 

In making this recommendation one restriction may be ventured 
upon — not at all in the humorous vein. All millionaires should be 
energetically piloted away from the shelves whereon Mr. Cawein's 
books rest — they should be headed toward one of the local book- 
shops and persuaded to purchase a volume by their fellow-citizen. 

(This is no subtle advertisement of Mr. Cawein, who fortunately 
needs no advertisement.) One remembers with pious horror seeing 
and hearing a local plutocrat step up to the Library desk and ask to 
take away a soiled, much-read volume of Mr. Cawein at a time when 
this poet's fame was sufficiently established to have made it perfectly 
safe for cautious Croesus to spend a dollar and a quarter for a nice, 
clean, personal and private copy of the Vale of Tempe or Kentucky 
Poems, or whatever it was. 

On this special text much might be said. Perhaps it may be 
wiser to shift to a general exhortation or — if you will — excoriation. 
(Certainly no offense is directed at certain local and alien patrons of 
poetry and of Mr. Cawein's in particular.) Why, it may be asked, 

118 



As Recorded by the Louisville Press 

will people expend hundreds and thousands of dollars on pictures, 
music and other worthy forms of art and be so penurious toward the 
modest, inexpensive, intimate art-poetry? Multitudes there are who 
feel disgraced if they do not punctually buy their two-dollar seats to 
concerts, to the drama, but who seem to have no compunction about 
evading the purchase of works of art in poetic form. They are, of 
course, not so decorative to a room — save indeed to the knowing eye. 
They make little concession to ostentation. For which reason all 
the more should they be purchased to furnish the inner chambers of 
the heart, the high mansions of the spirit. Gobelin, William Morris, 
or any other decorators offer furnishings so rich, so satisfying, in- 
spiring and delighting as Cawein's poesy, which — well, aere perennius! 



1914, April 14, Louisville Herald: Interest in poetry appears in- 
creasing. Selections from verse of Louisville writers 

ARE READ. MaDISON CaWEIN PRESIDES AT A POETS' SYMPOSIUM. 

Evidence of an increasing interest in current poetry was seen 
at the Public Library last night when several hundred men and women 
of literary tastes gathered in the Assembly Room to hear readings 
from the verse of living poets of Louisville and Kentucky. The 
meeting, characterized as a Poets' Symposium, was held under the 
auspices of the Louisville Literary Club, which has long been striving 
to awaken public interest in meritorious current verse. Madison 
Cawein acted as chairman. 

The program consisted largely of selections from the works of 
Louisville writers, read, in most cases, by the writers themselves. 
In addition, extracts were given by readers of the Club from the works 
of Kentucky poets now dead. The poets whose verses were read 
at the meeting are: Madison Cawein, Cale Young Rice, Charles 
Hamilton Musgrove, Young E. Allison, Edward A. Jonas, David 
Morton, Reverend U. G. Foote, Reverend Lucien V. Rule, Reverend 
T. M. Hawes, Lewis A. Walter, Herman Rave, Dr. Henry A. Cottell, 
Howard Miller, George Lee Burton, Omar W. Barber, E. S. Hopkins, 
Bert Finck, Judge William H. Field, Thomas Walsh, Augustus E. 
Willson and Ingram Crockett, and the late Robert Burns Wilson, 
Isaac T. Woodson, Will S. Hays, and Charles J. O'Malley. [During 
the course of the program Mr. Cawein read "The Derelict" by Young 
E. Allison, "A Little Further On" by Robert Burns Wilson," "What- 
ever Befalls" by Ingram Crockett, and "Worthiness" by Charles J. 
O'Malley and a few selections from The Poet, the Fool and the Faeries.] 

[Madison Cawein died December 8, 1914. The details of his 
death are given in Chapter VI.] 



119 



IV 

CAWEIN'S QUESTIONNAIRE 

Mr. Cawein frequently stopped in the law office of his old friend 
William W. Thum, of Louisville. During one of his calls, in the fall 
of 1914, Mr. Thum suggested that the poet write a short autobio- 
graphy, or at least prepare a few notes pertaining to his life and works. 
Mr. Cawein replied that he had neither the time nor inclination to 
write an autobiographical sketch, but would answer any questions 
asked. Mr. Thum then wrote a number of questions and presented 
them to the poet. Mr. Cawein took the questionnaire laughingly, and 
in the course of an hour or two wrote the answers and gave the docu- 
ment to Mr. Thum who preserved it. The poet, of course, presumed 
that his statements might serve some one as a basis for an article, 
but neither he, nor any one else, could have surmised that the original 
notes would some day be published. The questionnaire is here given 
in full: 



Trace the race and nationality of your father and mother; also state 
when and where they were born. 

My father, William Cawein, was born in the Rhine Palatinate, 
in a little German town on the Rhine, near Mannheim, about the 
year 1827. He was a descendant of Jean de Herancour, who was a 
Frenchman, coming from Paris, France, in 1685, a Huguenot, evicted 
as so many Huguenots were that year by the revocation of the Edict 
of Nantes. My father came or rather emigrated, to this country and 
Louisville in the forties. He met and married my mother in Louisville. 
My mother, Christiana Cawein, was born in Louisville, the middle 
of the last century [1839]. Her maiden name was Stelsly. Her father 
and mother were from Germany. Her father [John G. Stelsly], had 
served under Napoleon Bonaparte in his later wars. Both my father 
and mother died in the early beginning of this century. [Dr. William 
Cawein died in 1901, and his wife in 191 1.] 

120 



- A Quest ionna ir e 

When and where were you born? State where you first lived, and so 
on, chronologically. What about your schools, teachers, mode of educa- 
tion, etc.? Give the names of your brothers and sisters — older — younger, 
etc. 

I was born March 23, 1865, in Louisville, Kentucky, on Jefferson 
Street opposite the Court House. The house has long ago been torn 
down. My earliest recollections are of living on Broadway [between 
Thirteenth and Fourteenth streets, north side], in a cottage, where 
my father conducted a confectionery and bakery. We were very 
poor; mother did all her own work and made all our clothes. I was 
about six years old, I remember, when I was sent to school. The 
first school I ever attended was the Ninth and Magazine Street 
School. My father removed [in 1874] from Broadway near Thir- 
teenth Street, to accept the management of a hotel, a country water- 
ing place, named Rock Springs, three miles from Pewee Valley [also 
three miles from Brownsboro], in Oldham County, Kentucky. There 
for the first time I came in contact with wild nature. Beautiful and 
majestic was the nature there, of rocks and trees and waters. The old 
water mill [Babbit's Mill] in the valley of Rock Springs [the valley 
of the South Fork of Harrods Creek], has played an important part 
in my poems of this locality, which I have celebrated in verse now 
for thirty years. From there we moved [in 1875] to Louisville again, 
to the [north-west] corner of Franklin and Buchanan streets; thence 
[in 1876] to a farm in the Indiana Knobs, on the Georgetown Road 
[Old Vincennes Road], back of New Albany, some two or three miles. 
I walked with my brothers and sister to the New Albany school every 
day, while school was in session, and back again — in snow and sun, 
heat and cold, for something like three years; that is, during our 
stay in Indiana. This was beginning in 1876. My recollections of our 
home in the Knobs are among my most vivid and pleasant; though 
poor, we were happy. It was there I began to read. Poe's "Raven" 
was one of the first poems I ever read. I recited it, at the age of about 
ten, at the district school [West Union School, now Jackson Street 
School]. I had three brothers, John D. Cawein, William C. Cawein 
and Charles L. Cawein, and two sisters, both dead, Lula R. and 
Lilian L. Cawein. [Lula was born in 1857 and died in infancy. Lilian 
died in 19 12, aged forty- five years.] 

When did you graduate? What books had you been reading, etc.? 
What did you do to make a living? How long employed at the pool-room? 
What next? 

I graduated from the Male High School, Louisville, in June, 
1886, at the age of twenty-one years. I had been reading everything 
under the sun I could lay my hands on. Books were few and high, 
and we were poor. I had managed to get hold of Spenser's "Fairie 

121 



Madison C aw e in 

Queene" and Sir Walter Scott's poems, and was wild about them. 
Professor Reuben Post Halleck was my teacher in Philosophy and 
Literature, and he encouraged me to write. Keats and Shelley and 
Tennyson then got me, and I haven't been able to break away from 
their influence yet, and hope never to do so. It is a good influence; 
along with that of Shakespeare's, it makes for great things. 

In 1887 I went to work with my brother, John D. Cawein, in a 
pool-room on Third Street, between Market and Main streets. It 
was called The Newmarket. It was owned and conducted by Mr. A. M. 
Waddill and Mr. Joe T. Burt, both of them gamblers of the old type, 
affable, agreeable gentlemen, and proud of having a poet in their 
employ. I remained with them seven or eight years [1887 — 1892] 
and left them to engage in the writing of literature, which I have 
devoted myself to ever since. It was while there, an accountant and 
assistant cashier, that James Lane Allen, John Fox, Jr., and James 
Whitcomb Riley looked me up and made my acquaintance. I was 
"behind the bars," as it were, the brass bars of the cashier's desk, and 
they thought it a curious place to find a poet. It was. At the time 
Allen had written his "White Cowl," published in the Century; Fox 
had written a few brief stories of little significance, and Riley several 
books that had made him famous. I had just begun writing and 
publishing. 



When did you become interested in poetry? Any special occurrence 
leading to it? How did it happen? When did you begin to write? Early 
influences in writing? What books have influenced you? What poetry 
have you read? What prose? 

I became interested in poetry in my junior year at high school. 
We had been reading Hale's Longer English Poems, and I was fas- 
cinated by Keats and Shelley, and Goldsmith and Spenser, I 
commenced writing poems in imitation of others. Coleridge took hold 
of me also — like a terrible spirit. His "Ancient Mariner" and his 
"Christabel" haunted me, as also did Shelley's "Prometheus Un- 
bound" and "Queen Mab." Then came Tennyson and Browning. 
I removed my furniture into their attics, as it were, and dwelt ador- 
ingly with them, but never forgetful of my earlier masters, Keats, 
Coleridge and Shelley. Byron was too noisy for me, too rhetorical. 
Then there were others I liked greatly. Not until later years did 
Wordsworth have any weight with me. I like him better now than I 
did Keats and Shelley in my youth, when I cared nothing for him, 
considering, at that time, his great poem "Intimations of Immor- 
tality" a bore, a great bore, not to be compared with "Adonais" of 
Shelley, or the "Ancient Mariner" of Coleridge, or "Eve of St. Agnes," 
or "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" of Keats. But now Wordsworth 

122 



A Que s t io nna i r e 

brings me rest and quiet, and I love to sit in his company. He gives 
me peace; the others agitation and unease of soul, and longings that 
can never be satisfied. 

What preference have you among novels? Poems? Plays? 

Cervantes first of all. Don Quixote was my first love. I in- 
troduced myself to him when I was eleven years old. I have read 
this immortal book through at least four times. Thomas Hardy among 
modern novelists is my favorite. Between Cervantes and Hardy 
there is a host of others: — Bulwer Lytton, Sir Walter Scott, Thackeray ; 
and before these, SmoUet, Dickens and Fielding. Near to Hardy, a 
favorite of mine, is Meredith. 

My favorite poem would be hard to enumerate. Here are a 
few: Keat's "Eve of St. Agnes;" "Endymion;" Shelley's "Sensitive 
Plant;" Tennyson's "Oenone," "Lotus Eaters," "Idylls of the King;" 
Browning's "In a Gondola," "Pippa Passes," "Count Gismond," 
"Child Roland to the Dark Tower Came" and countless lyrics of 
many other poets, ending with the "Fairie Queene" of Spenser, the 
last but not the least. 

Among the plays: "Hamlet" and "Othello," "Tempest" and 
"Midsummer Night's Dream" by Shakespeare; "Faust" by Goethe; 
"Prometheus Unbound" by Shelley; Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird" and 
"Death of Tintageles;" Stephen Phillips' "Paola and Francesca," 
"Herod" and "Nero;" Percy Mackaye's "Canterbury Pilgrims." 

What poets have you met? When, and under what circumstances? 

I have met all the poets that are poets at present in the United 
States. In the nineties I met at his home, in Boston, through William 
Dean Howells, Oliver Wendell Holmes; a few days later, James 
Russell Lowell, at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I have 
been the guest of James Whitcomb Riley frequently in Indianapolis; 
also of Richard Watson Gilder and Robert Underwood Johnson in 
New York City. Have hobnobbed with the younger generation for 
years, William Vaughan Moody, Frank Dempster Sherman, Clinton 
ScoUard, to mention a few. In Boston I was the guest of Thomas 
Bailey Aldrich, and of William Dean Howells. Joaquin Miller at one 
time [February, 1897], came through and stopped in Louisville to see 
me. It would take too long to enumerate all the writers who have been 
my guests. 

What of people, your nature poetry; peace and war; great men you 
have met at home and abroad? 

I am greatly interested in people, and always have been; but I 
get more credit for being interested in nature than in men and women, 

123 



Madison C aw e in 

because I have recognized the fact that I can interpret nature better 
than I can people. And yet, many of my poems are full of human 
nature; even the nature poems are full of human nature. 

Peace. There never has been peace in the world. As long as we 
have kings and emperors and czars we are bound to have war. There 
is no escape from it. The world is working around to that end — the 
elimination of monarchies and the establishment of democracies, 
republics, all over the world. Then will be the millennium, much to be 
desired, much to be hoped for, 

I have met two Presidents; one whose like I shall never see again, 
Theodore Roosevelt; after him, William Howard Taft. I have met 
many artists, sculptors, novelists, all famous in their own line of work. 
In my state I have met many of the men who have helped to make 
its history and added to its honor and glory. 

I have never been abroad, and so have met no great foreigners in 
their own country. I have, however, corresponded with a number, 
among them Edmund Gosse, Andrew Lang and Arthur Christopher 
Benson, 



What of religion? Has it touched your life? What of history, 
philosophy, science, travel, friendship? Also love and loves? Law? 
Politics? 

Religion as expounded by the modern preacher from the pulpit 
has never touched me. The pathos of the life and death of Christ 
as described in the Bible has moved me to tears. I do not believe 
Christ to have been the Son of God, nor immaculately conceived. 
He was a wonderful man, and one who was beautiful in his life and 
most noble in his death. I feel cold when it comes to religion, because 
the world does not seem to have been benefited by Christianity; 
altho pretending to believe in the teachings of Christ, the world 
remains skeptical and barbarian — as the ages that preceded Christ's 
coming were, 

I have read and enjoyed history — the history of my country and 
that of Europe and Asia. I have read many histories: The History of 
the World, by John Clark Ridpath, whom I knew personally. Gibbon's 
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Macaulay's 
History of England, etc, etc, I have traveled only in the United 
States; never have been abroad. My friendships have been many, 
but mostly among men. Women seem to be afraid of a poet, 

I have had several love affairs, some of a more or less shadowy 
nature. One supreme one alone, with her I married — Gertrude Foster 
McKelvey, who became my wife June 4, 1903, We have one child, 
Preston Hamilton Cawein, born March 18, 1904, I take no interest 
at all in Law or Politics, 

124 



A Questionnaire 

Your poetical works — give name and date of each publication. 

My first volume, Blooms of the Berry, was published in 1887. 
Then followed in order named: The Triumph of Music, 1888; Accolon 
of Gaul, 1889; Lyrics and Idyls, 1890; Days and Dreams, 1891 ; Woods 
and Memories, 1892; and so on. A list of some thirty books — named 
and each dated as to year of publication — is in Who's Who in America, 
a correct list down to the present year. Poet and Nature is now being 
published. 



125 



V 

CAWEIN AS I KNEW HIM 

Madison Cawein and I were personal friends for only one year, 
the year 1914, the last year of his life. He was my senior by six years. 
During the time I knew him I had many opportunities for gathering 
material relating to his life and his works. Unfortunately I did not 
then dream that I would some day write my recollections of him, 
much less undertake the compilation of a book on his career, and 
therefore made no notes whatever. 

Prior to the summer of 191 3 we had met a number of times, but 
most of the meetings took place on the street and were little more 
than formal greetings. He was a writer who had gained an interna- 
tional reputation, while I was known simply among a few as one 
interested in compiling history. This difference, however, meant 
nothing to him. Cawein was a man who greeted any and all persons 
he remembered, unless, as was frequently the case, his mind was 
occupied to the exclusion of all who passed him on the street. Both 
of us were busy men, and up to the time of the beginning of our 
friendship I was little concerned about poetry or the life of any poet. 

In July, 1913, my History of Muhlenberg County was printed, and 
soon thereafter Mr. Cawein saw a copy of it at the publishers, 
John P. Morton & Company. A few weeks later we met by chance, 
and he asked me if I was the "bird" who wrote the "Muhlenberg 
book." He evidently had read part of it, for he commented on the 
few poems quoted and manifested an interest in some of the local 
traditions I had recorded. One day in late September of that year, 
he stopped me on the street and told me it was his intention to look 
into the early history of Kentucky with a view to using some incidents 
as bases for poems, and would like to talk with me on the subject. 
A day or two later I sent him a copy of my history with a note saying 
I would spend the month of October in the country and, upon my 
return would look him up. About the time I came back, I received the 
following note from him: 

126 



As I Knew Him 

Louisville, Kentucky, October 30, 191 3. 

My dear Mr. Rothert: I have been reading in your History of 
Muhlenberg County on and off for some three or four weeks now, and 
with a great deal of interest. I find your descriptions of Kentucky 
most vivid, and the incidents and facts stated and described as fas- 
cinating as fiction. 

You have a direct, terse style, and the episodes narrated, such as 
those of the Harpes and the Story of Lonz Powers, are graphic, to say 
the least. 

The poems quoted by you in this history are pieces of literature 
and should be perpetuated in some Kentucky collection of verse. 
The one entitled "God's Plow of Sorrow" is a little masterpiece which 
I thank you for introducing me to. All in all the work is a most 
interesting one with its data of citizens and events. I thank you for 
the copy you so kindly sent to me. 

Very sincerely yours, 

Madison Cawein. 

It so happened that beginning about this time we met on the 
street more frequently than before, and also made it a point to sit 
together at the meetings of the Filson Club and the Louisville Literary 
Club. By the first of January I had called his attention to every 
incident in Kentucky history known to me which I felt might serve 
as a subject for a poem. Strange as it may seem, it was not until 
after that time — that is, not until the original object of our getting 
together had been accomplished — was there, as I recall it, anything 
like a semblance of intimacy between us. One day, some months 
later, he remarked, "Well, Otto, ours wasn't a case of love at first 
sight; was it ?" 

During the course of the year I knew Cawein, we ate together a 
number of times at his home and mine; also in restaurants. I ac- 
companied him a few times to Iroquois Park; made a pilgrimage with 
him into the backwoods of Muhlenberg County, and was present at 
every sitting while his portrait was being painted by J. Bernhard 
Alberts. These minglings and some of my other associations, together 
with a few personal observations, are here set forth. 

In February, 1914, the Caweins moved from their residence in 
St. James Court into the St. James Apartments on the opposite side 
of the Court. Shortly thereafter Mr. Cawein and I began to call on 
each other and continued these visits up to the time of his death. 
He came to my home more frequently that I went to his. He realized 
that my mother was old and feeble, and for that reason I remained at 
home as much as possible. Furthermore, during the summer of 1914 
Mrs. Cawein and their son Preston spent about six weeks at Chau- 

127 



Madison Cawein 

tauqua, New York. Mrs. Cawein had gone there for the purpose of 
continuing her preparations as a dramatic reader and concert singer 
by giving readings and appearing on some of the programs. Our 
house was a large old fashioned one and Mr. Cawein was glad to come 
there, especially while his wife and son were away. He seemed more 
relaxed in our spacious rooms than in any place I ever saw him, 
except in the woods. His poetry and my efforts in history were some- 
times referred to, but seldom, if ever, discussed. There were, how- 
ever, many other subjects which formed the topics of many of our 
chats: literature, art, science, religion, travels, current events, 
writers, artists, some of his personal friends and mine — life in 
general. 

As just stated, I accompanied him a few times to Iroquois Park. 
This park, about two miles south of the city limits, contains 675 
acres. It was originally called Jacob Park, and is still so designated 
by many who frequent the place. Except for the winding and well 
kept roads it is a natural park, made and maintained by nature, or as 
Cawein once expressed it to me "It's an ungroomed park." Its many 
secluded nooks appealed to the poet. The road winding up and down 
the hillside offers a succession of grand landscapes, several of which 
are views of Louisville in the distance. 

On one occasion we wended our way to the top of the hill indulg- 
ing, as we walked, in nothing other than seemingly idle conversation. 
When we reached the point where a view of the city is best presented, 
I casually remarked that Louisville, in time, would spread and reach 
the outskirts of Jacob Park, and in doing so all the natural beauty 
now in the scene would be obliterated and become a part of a pano- 
rama of flats and factories. He paused a moment and then replied, 
"Yes, that's quite probable, but you and I can always come back, in 
memory, and through all eternity see it as we now see it." This re- 
mark probably would have been forgotten by me had I not read, 
after his death, his "The Poet, the Fool and the Faeries" and reflected 
on the speech beginning, "When I am dead, my soul shall haunt these 
woods." 

This is only one of many instances in which I heard what I re- 
garded as nothing more than a casual comment on a casual subject. 
After I began reading Cawein's poetry — I read very little of it 
during his life — I realized more and more that many of the remarks 
I heard him make in conversation with me were but reflections of 
some of his poems, and that notwithstanding his financial reverses 
and other troubles he continued to see poetry in everything. Judged 
by his conversation he seemed to be nothing more than a modest man, 
but in his poetry there is, as I see it, abundant evidence that he was 
an inspired man. In his poems he describes the things he saw with his 
own eyes and also gives expression to the inspired thoughts that 
flowed from his own soul. 

128 



As I Knew Him 

Most of his poems were written, as it were, in the first person; 
very few are an expression of the third person. The more I read his 
poetry the more I realize how truly autobiographical it is, and how 
truly it presents his own poetic adventures. It reveals every one 
of his characteristics. His modesty, for instance, is shown in the 
proem to Myth and Romance: 

There is no rhyme that is half so sweet 

As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat; 

There is no metre that's half so fine 

As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine; 

And the loveliest lyric I ever heard 

Was the wildwood strain of a forest bird. 

If the wind and the brook and the bird would teach 

My heart their beautiful parts of speech. 

And the natural art that they say these with, 

My soul would sing of beauty and myth 

In a rhyme and a metre that none before 

Have sung in their love, or dreamed in their lore. 

And the world would be richer one poet the more. 

That Cawein was a Pantheist is apparent in many of his poems. 
The day he presented me with a copy of Woman and Her Relations 
to Humanity he gave me a brief history of his mother's connection 
with the book. In answer to my question as to whether or not he, 
like his mother, was a Spiritualist, he then said in substance: 
"I am what might be called a believer in Spiritualism and have been 
for many years, but I never practiced it nor seriously tried to in- 
vestigate it. I believe in a hereafter and that the soul retains its 
identity and that then, as now, it forms a part of the Great Whole. 
My mother herself could not account for nor explain her power as a 
medium, nor could anyone else who tried to do so. All I know and all 
she knew was that when in a trance she transmitted messages from the 
departed to the living. I sometimes believe we are controlled more 
by the departed than by the living." 

On another occasion he told me, as he had told others before, that 
he believed in fairies and spirits. In answer to my question whether 
or not he had ever seen any fairies or ghosts, he hesitated a moment 
and said that he had not. 

In the spring of 19 14 I invited Cawein to take a trip to 
Muhlenberg County with me. I felt that he needed a diversion and 
that getting into a country he had not yet seen might interest him. 
I knew he was looking for incidents in Kentucky history, and having 
friends in Greenville and other parts of Muhlenberg County and being 
somewhat familiar with its history I had reason to believe that he 
would be benefited by the trip even if it did not supply him with new 

129 



Madison C aw e in 

material for poems. He cheerfully accepted the invitation. "Yes," 
he said, "I would like to ramble through the wilds of old Muhlenberg 
and hear some of its traditions as told by the people themselves." 
For one reason or another, the trip was postponed again and again 
until fall. In the meantime we often discussed the contemplated 
pilgrimage and invited our friend Young E. Allison to join us. 
Cawein looked forward to this outing with a boyish interest. This 
proved to be the poet's last trip to the country and included his last 
public reading, and I shall therefore give some detailed account of 
the pilgrimage. 

On October 8, Cawein, Mr, Allison and I left Louisville, and in 
the afternoon were met at the Greenville Station by a "reception 
committee" consisting of several of my old friends to whom I had 
written that we were coming. Our plan was to go at once to the home 
of Alvin L. Taylor, six miles in the country, but "the committee" 
urged us to remain in town over night and invited Cawein to give a 
reading the following morning before the high school. He cheerfully 
consented. 

We were escorted in royal style to The Old Inn where we were the 
guests of Orien L. Roark, editor, Harry M. Dean, prose and verse 
writer, and Alvin L. Taylor, farmer. 

The next morning we were given a breakfast in the James L. 
Rogers home by Mrs. Felix Rice, musician, and Miss Amy M. Longest, 
county superintendent of schools. The Rogers were out of town, but 
had invited the two ladies to use their spacious dining room for the 
occasion. The table was profusely decorated with blooming morning- 
glories. Cawein later told me that he had been wined and dined 
often, formally and informally, but never before had any decorations 
touched his heart as did this display of one of his favorite flowers. 

The Rogers residence stands on the site of the log house built 
about 1800 by Captain Charles Fox Wing, who was one of the founders 
of Greenville, a soldier of the War of 181 2, and who had served as 
county clerk from the county's beginning down through a period of 
more than fifty years. A number of traditions regarding Captain 
Wing were told at the table. The one that seemed to impress Cawein 
most was the story of the flag: On every third day of July from 1800 
until his death in 1861, this patriot planted a tall pole in the court 
house yard and early on the Fourth, sunshine or storm, hoisted the 
identical flag; and when he died, the old banner was placed on his 
breast and buried with him. "It's a fine story," said Cawein later, 
"and now that I have been on the ground, Captain Wing's life has 
given me some history to think about." 

After breakfast we walked to the auditorium of the public 
schools. The poet was greeted by the pupils of all grades and about 
one hundred men and women of Greenville. It fell to me to "introduce 
the speaker." From those of his own books that were available 

130 



As I Knew Him 

he read "Topsy Turvy," "Ballad of Low-Lie- Down," "Mound 
Men," "So Much to Do," also "A Boy's Heart," and one or two other 
poems. The audience was very attentive and gave him long applause. 
On our way out he whispered to me, as though confiding a secret, 
that he was pleased with the audience's manifestation of appreciation. 
I thought he had read unusually well and therefore congratulated him: 

"Madison," I said, "you did 'bully'. If the readings for which 
you are now preparing are as good as this one, then your hoped-for 
success as a platform reader is an assured thing." 

He replied somewhat seriously, "The way you 'slung the bull' 
about me as the greatest poet that ever came down the pike, it was 
up to me to do my darnedest to try to save your face." 

The remark amused me for he very rarely indulged in slang or 
the vernacular; and it also embarrassed me, for the tone of his voice 
indicated a disapproval of a statement I had made in the introductory 
remarks before the school: "Mr. Cawein is America's greatest poet 
and the world's greatest nature poet." 

Immediately after the reading we drove in a surrey to the farm 
of James Pannell, about three miles from Greenville. I had written to 
Mr. Pannell and suggested that he prepare an old-fashioned dinner 
for us and serve it in pioneer style. This he did with great success. 
Mr. Pannell knew many of the county's traditions and could tell them 
in an interesting way. While at dinner and while rambling over his 
farm, he recalled local stories of all kinds, from the gloomiest of 
tragedies to the funniest of "fairy-tales." Mr. Pannell is the "Jim 
Hanna" in J. Caldwell Browder's Nisi Prius, published in 1912. 

We drove through a heavy rain to the Alvin L. Taylor farm 
where we arrived a little before dark. "It took you five months to 
get here, and I hope you will stay at least five weeks," was Mr. Tay- 
lor's greeting. I had known Mr. Taylor for many years in both a 
social and a business way. I had visited him often and was almost as 
much at home in his home as in my own. Before we sat down to supper 
Cawein and Mr. Allison felt like they, too, were in the hands of an 
old friend. 

Mr. Taylor's family consisted of himself, his daughter Mrs. 
Edith Taylor Cornett, and her husband Earl Cornett. Mrs. Cornett 
was a good looking, modest, intelligent young wife and one who knew 
how to meet guests under any circumstances. She was with her 
father and husband when we alighted from the surrey. After we had 
chatted a few minutes Cawein took from the lapel of his coat a beauti- 
ful yellow rose that had been given to him by one of the girls at the 
Greenville school, and presenting it to Mrs. Cornett said, "Mrs. 
Cornett, may your life ever be as bright as this rose is now." 

When Cawein and I were getting ready to retire, I remarked that 
I hoped he had seen and heard enough during the day to supply him 
with sufficient material for a dozen volumes. 

131 



Madison C aw e in 

"I don't know what will stick," he said, "but I do know that 
Mrs. Cornett has given me something for reflection." 

I asked him what it was and he simply murmured: "Not Yet." 

The answer puzzled me. I presume I showed signs of some 
disappointment in not being taken into his confidence, for he ex- 
plained, "The thought is this: not yet a mother; not yet a mother's 
love; not yet a mother's tears." 

The next day we wandered around in the woods, visited an old 
graveyard, inspected the ruins of a long abandoned iron furnace and 
examined a few Indian mounds. That night we went fox hunting 
with Peter Cornett and a number of men and boys who had met for 
the purpose of taking us out. It was a dark and a more or less rainy 
night. We walked many a mile. At intervals we sat on rail fences 
or old logs and exchanged stories while listening to the occasional 
bark of our dogs running in the distance. Our dogs — fox hounds 
and coon dogs — found no trail of a fox or coon, but "treed" a 'possum; 
and the 'possum was soon bagged. 

Mr. Taylor, knowing that Peter Cornett had the reputation of 
being one of the best fox hunters in the county, invited him to call 
the next morning and relate some of his experiences to the poet. 
Cawein and I were still in bed when, about 6:30, the hunter arrived. 
Mr. Taylor urged him to enter our room and raise "Cain" about 
sleeping "after sun up." I was awake when "Peter the 'possum chaser" 
opened the door, and from all appearances Cawein was still asleep. 

"Hey there," shouted Cornett at the top of his voice as he 
walked toward the bed occupied by the poet, "Hey there, you lazy 
Possum Hunter, the sun's done up, the feedin's done and breakfast's 
come and gone and over with! What do you think!" 

Cawein opened his eyes, gazed at the fox hunter and his hunting 
garb, and answered with a smile, "I was thinking about the various 
kinds of barks of your dogs." 

After breakfast we sat on Mr. Taylor's front porch where, for 
more than three hours, Peter Cornett gave us an interesting account 
of his experiences as a fox-chaser and coon and 'possum hunter. He 
explained the difference in the barks of a hound ; these he designated 
"struck a trail," "on the chase," "treed" and "holding the tree." 
He described the nature of the fox and the coon — the sly fox and the 
cunning coon — and told how through close observation he learned to 
know their habits. He related the details of many of his hunts and 
commented on the actions of the dogs (and some of the men) that had 
gone with him. Cawein evidently was greatly interested in the 
hunter's knowledge and experience and the manner in which he 
talked. During the narrative he asked many questions, but made no 
notes. Although I did not recall ever seeing Cawein use a note book, it 
occurred to me that in this instance he might have been so absorbed 
as to have overlooked making notes. Later, when he and I were alone, 

132 



As I Knew Him 

I brought up the subject, and he answered in substance: "The hunter's 
talk was exceedingly interesting, but too long and varied for note- 
making; and, besides, what I'll forget of it will be forgotten because it 
failed to make an impression on me. And why should I have notes on 
things that did not impress me." 

The next morning — Sunday morning — found us in Greenville. 
While the church people were attending services, we leisurely walked 
around and viewed some of the historic homes and then rambled to 
the old graveyard. It was a beautiful autumn day. The town is 
always orderly and interesting, but during the solitude of the church 
hour it seemed like a "deserted village." The old graveyard is near the 
Court House. It was begun in the early part of last century and used 
until about twenty-five years ago. The age and the half-care and half- 
neglect of the place make it a solemnly picturesque spot. The old 
oaks and evergreens shade many of the mounds and stones — mounds 
hidden by myrtle, hone^'suckle or briar, and headstones erect, leaning 
or fallen. We read aloud many of the inscriptions. Cawein seemed 
particularly interested in the stone slabs that had fallen and were 
partly hidden by vegetation. There was nothing in the poet's words 
or actions to indicate that he had more than the idle curiosity of any 
person who leisurely wanders around in an old graveyard he had 
never before heard of nor seen. Up to that time, as already stated, I 
had read very little of Cawein's poetry. Now in reading his poems, 
especially those pertaining to burial places, I ponder over the strange 
fact that a man who wrote such beautiful lines about graveyards 
could wander around in one and not reveal some evidence of his 
ecstasy. Every grave must have beckoned to his poetic soul. Evident- 
ly I saw and heard only the visible man, but did not feel the presence 
of the invisible poet. 

We were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Lovell for dinner. 
Large bouquets of dahlias, zenias, asters, cox-comb and golden rod 
had been placed in the hall, parlor and dining-room in honor of the 
poet. Besides Cawein, Mr. Allison and myself there were two or three 
other guests. Everybody felt at home. Commenting on this little 
festivity Cawein said to me: "I enjoyed the dinner party very much; 
there were no foolish formalities. It was a good Sunday dinner — 
home food and garden flowers. I enjoy unpretentious affairs far more 
than formal dinners." And so I always found him during the year I 
knew him — more touched by little informal attentions than by formal 
functions given in his honor. 

Bayles and James Oates drove us to their farm ten miles west of 
Greenville and at the foot of Harpes Hill, one of the most picturesque 
and historic hills in the county. The four Oates brothers had ar- 
ranged an after-supper trip to Pleasant Hill Church, a country 
church where a revival was in progress. They explained that the place 
was on a high hill and the road to it a rough and rocky one, and for 

133 



Madison Cawein 

that reason the surrey would be used. When the surrey and the two 
best horses were brought out, it occurred to me that a rough ride in an 
old farm wagon would be quite a novelty. Cawein agreed and an old 
wagon drawn by two old mules — Dock and Daisy — was placed at our 
disposal. Our crowd of about ten filled the chairs and board seats 
that had been provided. Singing was one of the features of the ride, 
especially during our return in the moonlight. 

The church was very crowded, but by working a way through 
the men and boys massed near the door, we managed to find standing 
room in a rear corner. The corner happened to be one that sometimes 
is occupied by certain boys who, as we were told, "congregated there 
to devil the preacher." We were late and heard the last of the sermon 
only, but witnessed all the other revival features that followed. 
Shortly after the sermon, and while a number of men and women 
were attending to the mourners at the mourners' bench, the preacher, 
imploring others to come forward, pressed his way through the crowd 
toward the corner in which we stood. He did so, it seemed, for the 
purpose of ascertaining whether or not we were persons whose 
conduct was likely to interfere with the meeting. 

When the preacher stood face to face with Mr. Cawein, he sudden- 
ly grasped the poet's hand as though he had found a long lost friend, 
and asked: "Brother, what are you — you a preacher — doing in this 
corner?" 

Discovering he had taken a stranger for Preacher Kennerly, he 
bowed apologetically saying, "Pardon me, I thought you were a 
preacher." 

Cawein politely replied, "Well, perhaps I am a preacher — I preach 
the Gospel of Nature." 

The preacher smiled, moved on, continued his supplications, 
and soon regained his position near the pulpit. 

That he should have been taken for a Baptist preacher amused 
Cawein very much. After we returned to Louisville I, on one or two 
occasions, called him "Preacher Cawein," and his response was in- 
variably to the effect that he felt more like a boy the night we were 
at Pleasant Hill Church than he had since the days of his youth, and 
he hoped that the next time he was taken for a country preacher, he 
would be asked to "do" a little expounding of the Gospel of Nature. 

The Oates farm, as already stated, is at the foot of Harpes Hill. 
Near the top of the hill is a small cove in which Big Harpe and Little 
Harpe, two dreadful outlaws and their three wives, camped for a short 
time in 1799. Not far from this lair Big Harpe was captured, and his 
head cut off and stuck on the end of a pole and displayed on the 
main road as a warning to other murderers. We visited the cove and 
other nearby places associated with the Harpes and heard many of 
the traditions pertaining to these outlaws of pioneer times, in all of 
which Cawein was greatly interested. 

134 



As I Knew Him 

The view from Harpes Hill is beautiful, especially in fall when 
the leaves are turning. "Yes, it is beautiful," said Cawein, "I 
have seen more majestic and more awe-inspiring scenery, but not 
since my visits to John Fox, Jr., in the Cumberland Mountains of 
Kentucky, some twenty-five years ago, have I seen any landscape 
more beautiful than the view from this hill. But the knobs near 
Louisville and the hills near Brownsboro have fascinated me from my 
early boyhood and they still appeal to me more than any other 
hills." While we were walking around on Harpes Hill looking at some 
Indian mounds and taking in the scenery from various points, Mr. 
Gates gave us an account of how the fox hunters use the top of the 
hill as their stamping ground. He explained that because of its 
height, form and location, the hunters watching and waiting on the 
summit can hear their dogs for miles around — sometimes ten to twenty 
hounds chasing one fox. "When these fox hunts take place," declared 
Mr. Gates, "there's music in the air, often continuing from dusk to 
dawn. No music is more thrilling than the horn of the fox hunter and 
the bark of his running hounds." 

Cawein had often heard a few dogs on a chase, but never, as he 
expressed it, "A full orchestra of fox hounds." The brothers Gates 
invited us to remain two days longer, and assured us that in the 
meantime they could get together the fox hunters of the Harpes 
Hill country and their seventy-five or more hounds. Cawein had an 
engagement in Louisville the next day and therefore was unable to 
extend his stay in the country. The boys promised him that a meet- 
ing of the fox hunters would take place at any time he might set. 
He thanked them very politely. 

In this instance, as in a number of others that came under 
my personal observation, Cawein's thanks seemed, on the surface, 
more formal than heartfelt. I judge that his few words of thanks 
were sometimes interpreted as an expression of more or less indiffer- 
ence, when in reality he felt very grateful. The comments he made 
later on this invitation to the proposed fox hunt and on other at- 
tentions that had been given during the time I knew him, convinced 
me that he appreciated from the bottom of his heart any and all 
interests shown in him or in his efforts to write poetry. 

A few weeks after we returned from Muhlenberg County Cawein 
accepted the invitation of J. Bernhard Alberts to pose for a portrait. 
Cawein, knowing that Alberts had a number of commissions to keep 
him occupied for many months, asked, "Why waste your time on me 
when you can get others who pay for your work?" The invitation 
nevertheless pleased the poet, for he realized that the portrait was 
proposed as a mark of appreciation. During the last year of Cawein's 
life nothing occurred in which I was directly or indirectly i'nvolved 
that seemed to affect him more thah this manifestation of interest 
in him and his work. 

135 



Madison C awe in 

The time for the first sitting was arranged, and at exactly two 
o'clock in the afternoon, the hour set, the poet walked into the studio 
and laying down some fish wrapped in paper said, "Well, boys, here I 
am, your victim, and ready for business. I bought these fish to take 
home with me, and not for a fish fry in your studio. I like to carry 
things home for the kitchen; often the carrying makes them taste 
better." 

The canvas was ready and the artist soon decided upon a pose 
for his subject. I occupied a chair near the poet and he and the 
artist and I chatted while the painting was being done. Literature 
and art and current events were among our topics. There was no 
restraint of any kind. We talked freely on all subjects, and usually in 
a more or less jovial spirit. I can not now recall many of the details, 
but I remember distinctly that no matter of whom Cawein spoke it 
was never in uncomplimentary terms. 

The only callers admitted into the studio were Mr. Alberts' two 
brothers, Bruno and Gisbert, who were artists and often joined us 
in our rambling talks and also at the dinners after the sittings. 

There were seven or eight sittings. I was present at every one. 
Cawein 's friendly eyes showed more than his words that he appreciated 
the artist's efforts. On several occasions we discussed the bronze 
bust of him that had been placed in the Louisville Free Public Library. 
He said no honor bestowed upon him touched him as did that recog- 
nition by his home people. He told us the bust was made in Indian- 
apolis and was based chiefly on three photographs taken for the 
purpose. Mrs. Cawein and many others did not consider it a good 
likeness, and I am inclined to think that he agreed with them. Yet 
in our discussions of this subject he never expressed himself on that 
point. He, however, very modestly, and in a tone of voice that 
indicated deep appreciation, declared that "It is a thing to be proud 
of; I am elated." 

Mrs. Cawein was very much pleased with the portrait. "It is a 
perfect likeness," she said to us in the studio. "You have painted him 
'warts and all', for although Madison is only forty-nine, I am sorry he 
looks like a man of sixty, and I fear that when he reaches that age, he 
will look like a man of eighty." 

A few days after the portrait was finished Cawein gave me a 
copy of his book The White Snake, and in it he wrote: "To Otto A. 
Rothert, in memory of artistic hours passed in company together at 
the Alberts' Studio when discussing with 'Ben,' Bruno and Gisbert 
Alberts my portrait in process of completion. The Victim, Madison 
Cawein, November, 1914." 

The White Snake made a total of twenty-one books autographed 
by Cawein for me. A few months after we had become friends I began 
assembling his books with a view of making a Complete Collection 
and having every copy autographed. I had been searching for some 

136 



As I Knew Him 

weeks for the thirteen out-of-print volumes required to complete the 
Collection and had succeeded in procuring all except four when the 
poet died. His plan was to autograph all thirteen volumes at one 
time and thus avoid similarity of inscriptions. What proved to be 
his last call at my home took place two days before he suffered the 
apoplectic stroke that resulted in his death. Some time during his 
last call I incidentally remarked that by Christmas I probably would 
have procured the four missing volumes and we would then be ready 
for the inscriptions. Picking up three of his brochures that were 
lying on the table — Christmas Rose and Leaf, Whatever the Path and 
The Days of Used To Be — he suggested, "Let's dispose of these now, 
for I suppose you want them inscribed also." He wrote a Christmas 
greeting to me in each of the three and dated every one "December 
25, 1914." Little did we realize that he would be dead and buried 
before that approaching Christmas day. I have thus in effect some- 
thing curious — three of the poet's booklets autographed after his 
death. 

During the last week or two of his life he and I commented, more 
than once, on the suddenness and seriousness of apoplectic and 
paralytic strokes. It was a subject that naturally presented itself, 
for my mother, aged eighty and with whom I was living, was then in a 
hopeless condition as the result of a fatal stroke received a few weeks 
before. He called my attention to the fact that his father and two of 
his father's brothers and his mother and two of her sisters died im- 
mediately after, or in consequence of, apoplectic strokes. "So you 
see," he added, "it is somewhat likely I'll die the same way; but 
no matter how and when I go, I hope I'll be at home at the time, and 
not on one of the reading tours for which Gertrude and I are now 
preparing." 

Cawein had often told me he would like to purchase a few acres 
of forest land near Brownsboro and there live in a "woods home" the 
rest of his life. So in replying to his observations on the time and 
place of his death, I remarked: 

"You'll live long in your long-dreamed-of woods home. The 
kinspeople to whose deaths you referred were in good health before 
stricken. You have never been in good health, and since poor health 
often means a long life, you are very likely to reach your four score 
and ten. By that time the whole English speaking world will be 
appreciating your work, and through your poems and your readings 
you will have made an independent fortune." 

He answered cheerfully as he walked out of the house, "You 
may be right. At any rate, I'll see you again in a day or two." I saw 
him "in a day or two"; he was at home, upon his death bed, the 
victim of apoplexy. The mind that had seen so much beauty was 
enveloped in darkness. He never knew consciousness again. 



137 



VI 

THE DEATH OF CAWEIN 

The Louisville papers devoted many columns to Cawein at the 
time of his illness and death. When he died the national dailies pub- 
lished news items to that effect, and literary journals commented on 
his life and works. The clippings here reprinted tell the story of his 
death, and indicate the esteem in which he was then held at home and 
throughout the country. 



1914, December 4, Louisville Times: Madison Cawein seriously 
STRICKEN. Famous poet is felled by a sudden stroke 

DURING THE EARLY MORNING. 

Madison Cawein, Kentucky poet, whose works have gained 
recognition throughout the literary world, lies seriously ill at his 
home, No. six St. James Apartments. Without the slightest warning 
he was stricken by a vertiginous attack at nine o'clock this morning 
and since has been unconscious. His condition is such as to cause 
apprehension. 

Apparently the celebrated poet has been in his usual health, and 
news of his sudden illness comes as a shock to his friends and admirers. 
He arose at the customary hour this morning and took breakfast, 
after which he went into his study for a time. He then went to the 
bathroom to shave preparatory to a visit to the central section of 
the city on business, when he was stricken. As was his custom he 
had locked the bathroom door, and it was necessary to force in the 
door to reach him, after the noise of his fall to the floor had alarmed 
his mother-in-law. His brother. Dr. Charles L. Cawein, of 1316 
South Second Street, and Dr. Henry A. Cottell, of 1424 South Fourth 
Street, a lifelong friend, were hastily summoned. Efforts to revive 
the patient have been unavailing. 

Mr. Cawein was born in Louisville March 23, 1865, and is a son 
of the late Dr. William and Christiana Cawein. He received his 

138 



The Death of Cawein 

education at the graded school and the Male High School in this 
city. He has a wife, Mrs. Gertrude Foster McKelvey Cawein, a 
daughter of John F. and Jane Sproule McKelvey, and a son, Preston 
Hamilton Cawein. He is a member of the Louisville Literary Club, 
Filson Club, Pendennis Club, Louisville Country Club, the National 
Institute of Arts and Letters, the Poetry Society of America, Cliff 
Dwellers' Club of Chicago, and the Authors' Club of London, 
England. 



1 9 14, December 7, Louisville Herald, Editorial: Madison Cawein. 
[By Edward A. Jonas.] 

By the bedside of Madison Cawein watches, not only the 
Commonwealth of Kentucky, but the Commonwealth of Letters. 
If, as has been said, the verdict of other lands is as the voice of a con- 
temporaneous posterity, then does Madison Cawein o'ertop all others 
in American literature of today. England, not as a rule too kind to 
our writers, has not hesitated to acclaim his genius and surrender to 
his charm. Critics as competent and as careful as Edmund Gosse 
find in his work all the notes of permanency, all the attributes of a 
great and genuine gift. A singular felicity of phrase; an unusual 
sense of restraint; the simplicity of the master, the witchery of a well- 
stored mind ; perfection of form ; a real inspiration — all these and more 
belong to this son of Kentucky stricken before his race was fully run. 
At such a time words seem empty things. The sympathy and the 
sorrow are very real. We do but voice an earnest and widespread 
sense of loss. 



1914, December 8, Courier-Journal: Madison Cawein answers 
CALL. Poet's death after eighty-seven hours of uncon- 
sciousness. William Dean Howells among those who 

HONORED him. MaNY NOTED VOLUMES FROM LoUISVILLIAN's 

PEN. Family at his bedside. 

Madison Cawein, one of the world's greatest poets, died at 12:25 
o'clock this morning at his home. No. 6 St. James Apartments, in 
St. James Court. 

Death came after eighty-seven hours of unconsciousness and was 
said to have been due to a blood clot at the base of the brain, caused 
by a blow in falling against a bath tub. Dr. Charles L. Cawein, his 
brother, and Dr. Henry A. Cottell were in constant attendance, and 
no investigation will be made of the accident by the coroner. 

139 



Madison Cawein 

Until the last, the poet's wife, Mrs. Gertrude McKelvey Cawein, 
his only child, Preston Hamilton Cawein, and Mrs. Cawein's step- 
mother, Mrs. Anna M. McKelvey, watched at the bedside, hopeful 
for a return to consciousness or some slight sign of improvement. 

Dr. Henry Van Dyke, Minister to The Netherlands; William 
Dean Howells and other literary friends and Mr. Cawein's brother, 
William Cawein, of Spokane, Washington, were notified. John 
Cawein, his only other surviving brother, arrived last night from 
Newport, Kentucky. 

Mr. Cawein was stricken Friday just after he entered the bath- 
room of his apartment to shave, preparatory to a visit downtown. 
He had breakfasted with his family and spent a few minutes in his 
study. 

As was his custom, Mr. Cawein locked the door after passing 
into the bathroom. A moment later Mrs. McKelvey heard him fall. 
Assistance was summoned and the door was forced open. Mr. Cawein, 
fully dressed, was lying in the dry bath tub. Blood trickled from a 
wound on the left side of his head. His shaving accessories had not 
been removed from a cabinet, which led to the belief he suffered the 
vertiginous attack immediately after stepping into the room. 

All efforts to rouse the patient into a return to consciousness 
proved futile. It was thought at first that he had suffered a stroke 
of apoplexy, but development of a clot of blood at the base of the 
brain indicated, according to the physicians, that the state of coma 
was due to the injury to his head. 

Besides his widow, little son and Dr. Charles L. Cawein, the 
poet leaves two other brothers, John and William Cawein. 

Mr. Cawein was forty-nine years old. He was a member of the 
Louisville Literary Club, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, 
the Poetry Society of America, the Cliff Dwellers of Chicago, Authors' 
Club of London, England; Louisville Country Club, the Filson Club 
and the Pendennis Club. 

Mr. Cawein was hailed throughout the literary world as a remark- 
able "poet of nature," and while all critics ranked him with the great- 
est versifiers of this vein, not a few of them placed him at the very top. 

Mr. Cawein was known to Louisville people pretty generally as 
a poet; to a broader circle as "Kentucky's poet," and in New York 
and London literary reviewers reckoned him among the greatest of 
nature poets of all time. 

The magic of his nature landscapes was drawn from the Knobs 
back of New Albany, where as a boy, trudging along the road to 
school, while his brothers ran ahead, the beauty of things about him 
began to dawn for him. The inborn gift of the genius received 
development in the woods and hills and meadows of the country 
adjacent to Louisville, in the bluegrass regions of Central Kentucky 
and the Cumberland Mountains. 

140 



The Death of C awe in 

"The solemn books of history tell us that Kentucky was discov- 
ered in 1769 by Daniel Boone, but he first discovers a country who sees 
it first, and teaches the world to see it. No doubt some day the city 
of Louisville will erect, in one of its principal squares, a statue to 
'Madison Cawein, who discovered the beauty of Kentucky,' " wrote 
Edmund Gosse, a noted English critic, several years ago. 

Louisville friends of the poet who long knew him as a nature 
poet-painter found cause for comment in the rather singular signifi- 
cance of one of his last poems, "At the End of the Road." It found 
Mr. Cawein in a new vein, "singing not of young apple trees, but of 
old vagabonds; not of the gate into the meadow, but of the end of 
the road." 

This poem, "At the End of the Road," was selected by William 
Stanley Braithwaite, of Boston, for his Anthology of Magazine 
Verse for IQ14, being selections from all magazine poetry of the 
year. It follows: 

This is the truth as I see it, my dear, 

Out in the wind and the rain; 
They who have nothing have little to fear — 

Nothing to lose or to gain. 
Here by the road at the end o' the year, 
Let us sit down and drink of our beer, 
Happy-Go-Lucky and her Cavalier, 

Out in the wind and the rain. 

Now we are old, oh, isn't it fine, 

Out in the wind and the rain? 
Now we have nothing, why snivel and whine? 

What would it bring us again? 
When I was young I took you like wine, 
Held you and kissed you and thought you divine — 
Happy-Go-Lucky, the habit's still mine, 

Out in the wind and the rain. 

Oh, my old Heart, what a life we have led. 

Out in the wind and the rain! 
How we have drunken and how we have fed ! 

Nothing to lose or to gain. 
Cover the fire now; get we to bed. 
Long was the journey and far has it led. 
Come, let us sleep, lass, sleep like the dead. 

Out in the wind and the rain. 



141 



Madison Cawein 

In one of his lyrics ["Intimations of the Beautiful"] Mr. Cawein 
asked : 

The song-birds, are they flown away, 

The song-birds of the summer time, 
That sang their souls into the day, 

And set the laughing hours to rhyme? 
No cat-bird scatters through the hush 

The sparkling crystals of her song; 
Within the woods no hermit-thrush 

Trails an enchanted flute along. 

To this inquiry, the answer of Mr. Gosse was : "The only hermit- 
thrush now audible seems to sing from Louisville, Kentucky. 
America will, we may be perfectly sure, calm herself into harmony 
again and possess once more her school of singers. In those coming 
days history may perceive in Mr. Cawein the golden link that bound 
the music of the past to the music of the future through an interval 
of comparative tunelessness." 

"The virgin timber-forests of Kentucky, the woods of honey- 
locust and buckeye, of white oak and yellow poplar, with their 
clearings full of flowers unknown to us by sight or name, from 
which in the distance are visible the domes of the far-away Cumber- 
land Mountains — this seems to be the hunting field of Mr. Cawein's 
imagination," said Mr. Gosse. "He brings the ancient gods to 
Kentucky and it is marvelous how quickly they learn to be at home 
there." [Introduction to Kentucky Poems.] 

Madison Julius Cawein was born in Louisville, March 23, 1865. 
His father. Dr. William Cawein, came to this city early in the nine- 
teenth century from the Rhine Palatinate, where the family, who were 
Huguenots, had resided since their flight from Paris after the revoca- 
tion of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. His mother was Christiana 
Stelsly, the daughter of a German cavalry ofificer in Napoleon's army, 
who, after the defeat at Waterloo, came with his wife to the United 
States, remained for a time in Ohio, but eventually settled in Louis- 
ville. Here William Cawein met Christiana and married her; to them 
were born four sons and a daughter. In 1874 the family moved to Old- 
ham County ; thence, after a year, to the "Knobs" back of New Albany. 

"Here," said the poet himself, "I found my first love of nature. 
For nearly three years we lived there in a small farmhouse on the top 
of a hill, surrounded by woods and orchards, meadows and cornlands. 
If ever children were happy they were happy there. We walked two 
and a half miles every school day from the fall to the spring, to the 
New Albany district school; but we enjoyed it. I used to walk along 
by myself making up wonderful stories of pirate treasures and 
adventures, which I could continue serial-wise from day to day in my 
imagination unendingly — dependent upon no publisher." 

142 



Madison C aw e in 

The family returned to Louisville about 1879. The young 
genius was sent to the public schools and later, in 1881, entered the 
Male High School. At this age the favorite reading of Cawein con- 
sisted in tales of the Wild West. When he was 16 years old, legends 
of chivalry attracted his attention. He secured and read "The Fairie 
Queene," and liked it so well that he wrote to the publishers for the 
remaining six books, only to be chagrined to learn that Spenser never 
had completed the poem. 

It was under the inspiration of Professor Reuben Post Halleck, 
then instructor in English and elocution at High School, Cawein was 
led to walk with the masters. He was especially interested in Scott, 
Shelley, Tennyson and Keats, and wrote many lengthy and bombastic 
imitations of them. These he used to declaim from the rostrum of 
the old school chapel. He was graduated in the class of 1886, pre- 
paring the class poem "Mariners," which he published nineteen years 
later in Nature Notes. 

Longing of the young poet to begin a collegiate course was 
ungratified, due to circumstances. He considered also entering the 
Navy or West Point, but found these, too, impracticable. His first 
employment was as an accountant for his brother, who was cashier 
in the Newmarket, a pool-room on Third Street. For nearly eight 
years the poet toiled in the rather unsympathetic atmosphere of 
tobacco smoke, auctioneering and betting. When not exchanging 
money for the tickets of the winning betters, he was snatching chances 
of pursuing his favorite studies, Ovid and Heine, natural science and 
the English classics. 

On Sundays, Cawein roamed the wooded hills along the Kentucky 
shore of the Ohio River or about the falls on the Indiana banks, or 
else among the knobs, the playmates of his childhood, prying into 
the lives of tree, flower, weed, bird and insect. Here he strolled, 
composing in his mind, stopping now and then to set down in his 
note-book the completed stanza. 

[The foregoing account of Mr. Cawein's death is followed by 
about a column devoted to brief comments on his various books.] 



1914, December 8, Louisville Times, Editorial: Madison Cawein. 
[By Charles Hamilton Musgrove.] 

Madison Cawein, Nature's poet and priest, Kentucky's poet, 
our poet, is no more. In the language of another, gifted also with the 
poetic vision, "he had reached that spot where manhood's morn just 
touches noon, and the shadows still were falling toward the West." 
With his rare powers fully ripened and at the zenith of his fame, 
honored and loved by the literati of two continents and enraptured 

143 



Madison C aw e in 

with the glittering vistas which stretched before him in the Land of 
Song, darkness fell suddenly upon his path, the hand of Azrael was 
laid upon his harp, and it is mute. 

Madison Cawein was the apostle of Nature. He adored her in 
all her moods. He was her humble worshiper and loyal interpreter. 
Like Hugo, he was awed by her "enormous gearing whose first motor 
is the gnat and whose last wheel is the zodiac." He was a friend of 
the chipmunk, the interpreter of the thrush, the companion of the 
eagle. Sea and sky, wind and rain, heath and heather, "twilight and 
evening star," all had a message for his soul, all spoke in symbols that 
he understood. Now he is gone. One melodious voice between the 
silences is still. 

In this commercial age when there is such a dearth of the pure 
poetic art, when the "homely, slighted shepherd's trade" carries with 
it little more than the recompense of a mission faithfully fulfilled, of a 
heart consecrated to the divine ideals of beauty, the world can ill 
spare a singer like Mr. Cawein. It is particularly saddening to know 
that as much as he had accomplished, much more is left undone. 
Even on the day that he was stricken with his last illness, he was busy 
with many plans for the future, glowing with the rapture of creating, 
thrilled with the inspiring fervor of kindling dreams. 

Now he is gone. Poesy stands beside his bier with a wreath of 
immortelles. Nature in mourning garb murmurs a requiem. His 
sorrowing wife and little son have lost a devoted husband and father. 
The world has lost a poet. 



1 914, December 8, Louisville Post, Editorial: The death of 
Madison Cawein. [By Richard W. Knott.] 

The death of Madison Cawein will carry regret to thousands who 
knew him only through his books; and that regret deepens into grief 
to all who knew him well. There was with this poet of the quiet 
paths no separation from the round of daily duties and pleasures. 
All he saw added to the joy of life, and made him a delightful com- 
panion, unworldly in many ways, but in all things generous and in all 
ways welcome 

These hills and streams, these meadows and open roads, and 
winding paths, held messages for him alone, calling him every year 
to new visions and to new desires. Here in Kentucky the old legends 
came to him trailing clouds of glory and lived again. Through the 
shadows and silence of the beeches, oaks and maples, through the 
tangled underbrush, out through the hanging honeysuckles, ivies 
and trumpet vines, he looked as through a casement, into a world 

144 



The Death of C awe in 

peopled by that mighty host called into existence by the poets and 
oracles, the sages and dreamers and myth-makers who lived and 
wrought when the race was young. 

By these streams, known to all of us, over the knobs north and 
south of the Ohio, along every by-path and no-path of Cherokee, he 
wandered joyously, and ever-new beauties blossomed at his feet. 
Here he felt that same presence which disturbed Wordsworth along the 
banks of Wye, "with the joy of elevated thoughts and brought to 
him a sense sublime, of something more deeply interfused." 

The end has come. The book, the wonderful book of visions and 
of beauty, is closed forever. In vain will frost write its magic call 
to him over the winter landscape; the eye of the seer is closed, and 
the wand with which he summoned the unseen inhabitants to their 
festivals has fallen, broken, from the hand of the master. 



19 14, December 9, Courier- Journal, Editorial: Madison Cawein. 
[By Harrison Robertson.] 

Madison Cawein lived all of his too-short life in or near Louisville. 
As boy and man he was our associate and neighbor. We knew well 
his personal worth and we took pride in his literary achievement and 
reputation. Certainly he was not "without honor in his own country." 
Rather it was our delight to honor him. Indeed, such has been our 
admiration of him, so intimate have been our relations, that our 
perspective is perhaps too short for an accurate judgment as to his 
rank as a poet. But we can rest assured that he will not suffer before 
that world tribunal which assays and stamps mankind's product of 
pure gold. 

The feature of Madison Cawein's career that especially impressed 
The Courier- Journal was his rare and unfaltering consecration to his 
ideals. He saw and felt the poetry of Nature, and it was his un- 
swerving purpose to give it voice. He kept to that purpose from first 
to last. In an age of materialism, of business, of practical and 
scientific activity, rather than of esthetic inclination and atmosphere, 
an age of fallow art and tailor-made poetry, he turned his back to 
Mammon and his face to Pan, steadfast, through every vicissitude of 
environment or fortune, to his inspiration. 

Nothing short of such an inspiration could have buoyed him 
through to triumph. In his youth, confined by day to the drudgery 
of an uncongenial clerk's desk, giving his Sundays and holidays to 
his beloved fields and his evenings to composition, he persevered long 
with little encouragement except that received through the publica- 
tion of his verses in The Courier- Journal. For several years nearly all 

145 



Madison C aw e in 

of his shorter poems first reached the public through the colums of 
this paper, and, unknown beginner though he was, so unmistakable 
was its quality that The Courier -Journal cannot recall that any of it 
ever shared the fate of the great mass of "unavailable" versification 
which pours into a newspaper office. Readers of The Courier -Journal 
soon came to realize that a genuine poet was among them, and the 
appreciation he won in those early days followed him ardently to the 
last. 

Gradually the circle of his recognition and the field of his pub- 
lication widened, and the acclaim of such authorities as Howells and 
Aldrich and Gosse opened the way for the international reputation 
which ultimately he won. 

Perhaps the chief criticism which has been urged against Cawein's 
poetry is that it lacked in appeal to the human heart — that it has 
struck not those simple elemental chords of feeling which move man- 
kind and die only with mankind. But the heart of man is only one 
manifestation of the heart of Nature, and from the heart of Nature 
who that survives Cawein so happily has sought its secrets or so 
richly has given them tongue? 

While refraining, as already explained, from attempting now any 
comparative appraisement of Cawein even we, his home folks, may 
say so much without inviting disagreement in any court of competent 
criticism. 



1914, December 10, Louisville Herald: Pay last tribute in simple 
SERVICE. Numerous friends gather at church where 

FUNERAL OF MaDISON CaWEIN TAKES PLACE. SIMPLICITY MARKS 
SETTING TYPICAL OF POET's NATURE. 

The body of Madison Cawein, Kentucky's famous nature poet, 
was laid to rest yesterday in Cave Hill Cemetery, following brief but 
impressive funeral services at the Church of the Messiah. The 
funeral was private, but a large number of friends gathered at the 
church to pay their last respects. Floral offerings were banked 
about the altar and on the casket was laid a spray of fir and a branch 
of russet red leaves, indicative of the simplicity of his life and of his 
love for the works of nature. 

The last services were conducted by the Reverend Maxwell 
Savage, pastor of the Church of the Messiah [Unitarian] and the Very 
Reverend Charles Ewell Craik, rector of Christ Church Cathedral. 
[Episcopal]. "Dreams" and "Requiem" written by Mr. Cawein, 
were read by Dr. Savage. The order of the services follow: 

Organ — "Dead March" in "Saul" (Handel). Scripture Read- 
ing — The Reverend Maxwell Savage. Funeral Chant — Choir. 

146 



The Death of Cawein 

Invocation — The Reverend Maxwell Savage. Hymn — "Nearer, My 
God, to Thee" — Choir. Reading of Poems by Mr. Cawein — The 
Reverend Mr. Savage — (a) "Dreams," (b) "Requiem." Anthem — 
"Lachramosa," Requiem Mass (Mozart) — Choir. Hymn — "Friend 
After Friend Departs" (Mr. Cawein's favorite hymn) — Montgom- 
ery. Prayer — The Very Reverend Dr. Charles Ewell Craik. 
Eulogy of Mr. Cawein — The Reverend Maxwell Savage. Hymn — 
"Lead, Kindly Light" — Choir. Funeral March — "Song Without 
Words" (Mendelssohn) — Played by Miss Louise Hollis, organist. 

A brief, but touching tribute to Mr, Cawein was paid by Dr. 
Savage. "Great is he who loses not in manhood his childlike heart 
was said long ago," said Dr. Savage, "and this was Madison Cawein." 
[The active pallbearers were William W. Thum, Cale Young Rice, 
W. T. H. Howe, R. P. Halleck, John Peter Grant and John L. 
Patterson. The honorary pallbearers were George DuRelle, Henry 
Watterson, Richard W. Knott, Dr. Henry A. Cottell, Edward J. 
McDermott and George T. Settle.] 



1914, December 11, Louisville Herald: Madison Cawein's last 

VOLUME WILL BE RELEASED TODAY. 

The Poet and Nature and the Morning Road, Madison Cawein's 
last volume, will be released to the public today by the publishers, 
John P. Morton & Company. A few days before Mr. Cawein's 
death, he made arrangements with the Kaufman-Straus Company 
to feature the work. 

A large painting of Madison Cawein sitting at his desk will also 
be unveiled today in the "Cawein Window" of the Kaufman-Straus 
Company. The protrait is by J. Bernard Alberts, the young Louisville 
artist, who finished the picture two weeks ago. The painting has 
been greatly admired by friends of Mr. Cawein who have seen it. 

Mr. Cawein's final volume is dedicated to John Burroughs, 
naturalist, poet and philosopher, "with the greatest admiration for 
the work he has done and is still doing for the True and Beautiful." 
A fly leaf carries an appreciation of Cawein's work by Dr. E. Y. 
Mullins, of Louisville, in which Dr. Mullins says: 

"If the world would read Mr. Cawein's exquisite nature poems 
more generally and appreciatively, can any one doubt that our love 
of our great Commonwealth would be purified and elevated? There 
is a hoard of glorious gold, although not of the ordinary sordid kind, 
awaiting those who heed the 'Call of the Road.' As we follow we 
shall visit the tents where the tribes of beauty dwell, and see the 
wild-eyed girl of Spring awakening." 

147 



Madison C aw e in 

1914, December 11, Courier -Journal: Will bequeaths bulk of 
Cawein estate to widow. 

The will of Madison J. Cawein, dated July 7, 1910, and probated 
in the County Court yesterday, bequeaths the bulk of his estate to 
his widow, Gertrude McKelvey Cawein. The widow is bequeathed 
all stocks, bonds and cash, with the exception of $1,000, which is 
left in trust to her for the benefit of their son, Preston Hamilton 
Cawein. [The $1,000 here referred to had been deposited in a bank 
about 1910, and at the time of the poet's death was drawing interest 
for the son; and it is still doing so in 1920.] Besides the personalty, 
including life insurance, the widow is bequeathed the copyright to all 
books of the testator published in this country and England. The 
testator carried an accident insurance policy of $11,500 and life insur- 
ance amounting to $5,000. [This is an error. Mr. Cawein carried a 
$10,000 accident policy and no life insurance.] The widow is named 
guardian of the son and literary executrix by the testator, while the 
Louisville Trust Company is named executor of the will. 

Madison Cawein's Will 

[Mr. Cawein's will is written in his own hand. It has heretofore not 
been published: (Louisville, Ky., July 7, 19 10. I, Madison J. Cawein, 
being of sound mind desire that in the event of my death all my prop- 
erty, personal and otherwise, to-wit: (all stocks and bonds and monies, 
including monies that at the time of my death may be margined on 
stocks, also stocks themselves if so desired) is to go to my beloved 
wife, Gertrude McKelvey Cawein, with the exception of $1,000 
which I bequeath to my beloved son, Preston Hamilton Cawein, 
to be held and kept in trust for him by his mother, Gertrude Cawein, 
whom I appoint his guardian. To Gertrude McKelvey Cawein I 
bequeath also the copyrights to all my books published both 
in this country and in England, also all interest in them of 
whatever character. I appoint her my literary executor. The 
Louisville Trust Company, of Louisville, Kentucky, I appoint 
executor of this my last will and testame^it. Madison J. Cawein. 
Witnesses: J. M. Eddy, A. C. Mead Board)]. 

1914, December 15, Courier -Journal: Eulogy on poet. Friends' 
LOVE FOR Cawein voiced at literary meeting. Want 
favorite path and oak to bear his name. Original 
poems and selections from his own works read. Res- 
olutions ARE adopted, 

Madison Cawein, the man and the poet, was eulogized last night by 
his friends at a memorial meeting held in his honor by the Louisville 
Literary Club in the assembly room of the Louisville Public Library. 

148 



The Death of C awe in 

A bust of the poet, presented to the Library last year by the 
Louisville Literature Club, rested on a pedestal on the speaker's stand, 
having been taken there from the main corridor, where it was placed 
December 8, the day of the poet's death. It was draped with two 
laurel wreaths, one from the Libary staff and one from the poet's 
associates of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. 

President Thomas M. Gilmore, of the Literary Club, presided, 
and the Assembly Room was filled with literary and personal friends 
of the poet. Letters regretting their inability to be present were 
read from Miss Margaret Merker, the Reverend Dr. C. R. Hemphill, 
Henry Watterson, Richard W. Knott and Robert W. Brown. The 
exercises consisted of original poems, talks of appreciation and read- 
ing of select passages from the poet's works. 

The club adopted a resolution, prepared in the form of a letter 
to the Board of Park Commissioners, asking that a winding wild-like 
path in Iroquois Park, where Mr. Cawein delighted in strolling, and 
a towering oak, which was his favorite tree, be christened with his 
name. If the board accedes to this request the path will be known 
as "Cawein's Walk," and the oak tree as "Cawein's Rest." The 
path leads from the foot of a hill in the park and meanders through 
an unimproved part of the park about three-quarters of a mile. The 
letter to the board, written by Professor Reuben Post Halleck, recited 
the fact that Mr. Cawein loved the path because it led through an 
unimproved woods, and that he wrote many beautiful poems under 
the shade of the big oak tree. 

Formal resolutions reciting the history of Mr. Cawein, and con- 
taining a tribute to "a successful citizen and a poet of deserved 
renown," were reported by a committee of which Judge Charles B. 
Seymour was chairman, and adopted. 

Madison Cawein's love for his fellow man, a passion excelling all 
his other qualities, was the prominent feature, as well as the underlying 
theme of all the addresses. All the speakers emphasized the truth 
of the characterization usually applied to him, that of nature poet, 
but each stressed the idea that he was something more, that he was a 
lover of mankind. 

"Madison Cawein," a sonnet by Robert E. Lee Gibson, of St. 
Louis, was read by Dr. Henry A. Cottell. The Reverend Dr. E. Y. 
Mullins, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 
spoke on the subject, "An Estimate of Mr. Cawein as a Poet." 
Miss Ethel Allen Murphy read an original poem entitled "Wed Not 
His Name To Death." Lewis A. Walter gave reminiscences of the 
poet. Following a tribute by Miss Sallie Smyser, George Lee Burton 
spoke on "Madison Cawein, the Glorifier of the Commonplace." 
The Reverend Dr. U. G. Foote, pastor of the Methodist Temple, 
read two original poems, "In Memoriam" and "Gethsemane." Bert 
Finck, speaking to the subject, "A Few Remarks," eulogized the 

149 



Madison Cawein 

democracy of the poet, his sincerity and modesty. Miss Marion Forster 
Gilmore read an original poem. The Reverend Dr. W. W. Landrum, 
pastor of the Broadway Baptist Church, read selections from Mr. 
Cawein's works and made a few comments. He said Mr. Cawein 
was not only a poet, but prophet and a preacher as well. 

Miss Margaret Steele Anderson read an original poem. Miss 
Anderson was followed by Miss Anna Blanche McGill who spoke on 
"Human Elements," emphasizing, as the other speakers did, Mr. 
Cawein's democratic nature. 

Dr. Henry A. Cottell read a sonnet, "In Memoriam," and in 
a short talk said he had lost his nearest and dearest friend. Herman 
Rave, of New Albany, who published his first book of poems when 
Mr. Cawein published his first, spoke on "A City Walk with Mr. 
Cawein." The walk was taken through a Louisville park when the 
two of them had just published their first works. "Even then," 
Mr. Rave said, "Mr. Cawein showed he was a lover of his fellow man. 
I think this talk about his being a nature poet and nothing more is 
all a mistake. There can be no nature poet without human love and 
sympathy. Mr. Cawein had the great gift also that makes all great 
men — inventors, poets, prophets — he had vision." 

Miss Nannie Lee Frayser read several selections from Mr. 
Cawein's latest book. "All of them," she said, "possess an appeal to 
children as well as grown-ups." She predicted that Cawein would 
in the future be considered a great children's poet as well as a great 
nature poet. "You who are here tonight know him through his 
memories," she said, "but he will live in the future through our boys 
and girls as they shall come to know him, especially through his last 
book." 

Professor Halleck paid a tribute to the literary excellence of 
Mr. Cawein's poetry, and noted with pleasure the profound regret 
which his taking off occasioned in Louisville, saying, in part: "Lovers 
of poetry in Louisville were gratified to see that its newspapers gave 
more space to the passing of Cawein than is usually accorded to 
the obituary of the very greatest financier, local or national. Years 
ago a prominent Southern newspaper boasted that it would not 
publish poetry at less than a dollar a line. Today no section of the 
country surpasses our Southland in honoring poets." 

Dr. C. S. Gardner read a sonnet. A. H. Woodson, speaking 
on the subject, "More Than a Nature Poet," said: "Cawein was a 
real poet, therefore a great poet, because there is no mediocrity in 
the real poet." 

William W. Thum, in a few appreciative remarks, said: "As a 
poet, that which characterized Madison Cawein was that which 
characterizes the poets of all the ages, imagination." Judge George 
DuRelle, with the subject, "At Sunset," paid the last tribute to the 
poet. 

150 



The Death of Cawein 

1914, December 18, Louisville Post: Cawein's death due at 
APOPLEXY. Conclusion reached by physicians who held 

AUTOPSY ON poet. SkULL NOT FRACTURED. BlOW ON HEAD 
DUE TO FALL IS BELIEVED TO HAVE CAUSED THE STROKE. 

Ten Louisville physicians reached the conclusion that the death 
of Madison Cawein was due to apoplexy, upon holding an autopsy 
at the undertaking establishment of Schoppenhorst Brothers. The 
autopsy had been demanded by the Fidelity and Casualty Company 
when counsel for the widow of the poet made request for payment 
on an accident insurance policy for $11,500, [for $10,000] payable to 
Mrs. Cawein. 

Three physicians who had attended Mr. Cawein had given sworn 
testimony to Coroner Ellis Duncan, and on this Coroner Duncan 
had found that the death of Mr. Cawein was due to apoplexy. It 
was claimed for the widow, through counsel, that Mr. Cawein had 
suffered a stroke of vertigo or apoplexy, and that his skull was injured 
when his head struck a bathtub. 

The post-mortem examination showed that the skull was not 
fractured, as had been reported, but that there was an abrasion on 
the head and a large blood clot on the brain. The body had been 
exhumed for the purpose of the autopsy, which was conducted by Dr. 
F. S. Graves, pathologist of the University of Louisville and of the 
City Hospital. 

Dr. Charles L. Cawein, brother of Madison Cawein; Dr. Henry 
A. Cottell, his intimate friend, and Dr. Simrall Anderson had signed 
the death certificate to the effect that death was from apoplexy. 
However, the family of Mr. Cawein have authorized the statement 
that, in their opinion, the cerebral hemorrhage found was such as 
would have been caused by an external blow, as would result when a 
man would slip and cut his head. It was stated that an external 
wound was on his head when he was picked up unconscious in the 
bathroom at his apartments. 

According to Dr. Cawein, he and other physicians at the examina- 
tion were of the opinion that the blow on the head was the cause 
of the apoplectic stroke. Present at the autopsy were: Dr. Ellis 
Duncan, Dr. Charles L. Cawein, Dr. Henry A. Cottell, Dr. Simrall 
Anderson, Dr. John K. Freeman, Dr. Lee Baldauff, Dr. James R. 
Cottell, Dr. F. S. Graves, Dr. C. H. Harris, and Dr. Horace H. Grant. 

Attorneys E. C. Roy and William W. Thum represent Mrs. 
Cawein, and the insurance company was represented by Fred Forcht 
and H. N. Lukins. 

[The physicians not being unanimous in their opinion as to which 
came first — the fall or the stroke — the case was compromised and 
$7,500 paid to the widow.] 



151 



Madison C aw e i n 

1914, December 27, Courier-Journal: Cawein Path and Bridge 
IN Iroquois dedicated by High School Alumni. 

Simple exercises incident to the dedication of the Cawein Log 
Bridge and Cawein Path in Iroquois Park, where the late poet found 
inspiration for much of his verse, featured the annual midwinter walk 
of alumni of the Louisville Male High School yesterday afternoon. 

Icy walks and the cold weather deterred many of the older alumni 
from joining. Judge Shackelford Miller and Lieutenant Governor 
Edward J. McDermott sent letters of regret to Professor Reuben Post 
Halleck, former principal of the High School. Professor Halleck was 
the originator of the reunion plan and leader of the band of students 
which started from his home, 11 54 South Third Street, yesterday. 

From Senning's Park the alumni walked to the top of the hill 
in Iroquois Park and then through the beech woods, habitual haunts 
of the poet, to the log bridge, one mile southwest of the hill. In 
the absence of Mr. McDermott, the address of dedication was delivered 
by Professor Halleck. He spoke briefly and closed his remarks by 
reading two verses of Cawein 's "The Whippoorwill." 

From the bridge the walkers went to the Cawein Walk, located 
about a mile away. This stretch of walk extends about a half mile 
through one of the prettiest sections of the park property, and the 
Board of Park Commissioners has been asked to commemorate the 
poet's memory by placing signs and notices along its course. Stand- 
ing beneath an old white oak tree, Norvin Green, vice-president of 
the alumni association, delivered the dedication address. When he 
finished the party traversed the entire length of the path. 

"All of those who went along today were enthusiastically in 
favor of having another reunion walk next year, and we will seek to 
select a date when snow and ice will not be around to frighten away 
the older members," said Professor Halleck last night. 

[Since 1915 a pilgrimage, under the leadership of Reuben Post 
Halleck and of Miss Ethel Allen Murphy, leader of the Lyric Club of 
the Girls' High School, has been made every year, in September, over 
the Cawein paths. On Sunday, December 12, 1915, the services of the 
Church of the Messiah were conducted with special features in honor 
of Mr. Cawein. The Louisville Literary Club, as already shown, set 
aside its regular program for December 14, 1914, and devoted the 
evening to paying tributes to the dead poet. On March 21, 1915, 
the Adath Israel Sisterhood gave a Cawein Memorial Meeting. 
Since Mr. Cawein's death the Louisville Literary Club has held a 
Cawein Memorial Meeting every year: December 13, 1915; 
December 11, 1 916; December 10, 1917; December 13, 1918; December 
12, 1919, and December 10, 1920. The meeting in 1920 was held in 
the Music Room of Mrs. J. B. Speed; the other took place in the 
Louisville Free Public Library.] 

152 



The Death of Cawein 

19 14, December 18, The New York Times: Editorial in Review of 
Books. 

In his brief span of life Madison Julius Cawein, whose death 
at his home in Kentucky was announced last week, contributed 
much that was of permanent value to American letters. He was 
only forty-nine years old when he died, but in his short career^ 
his fine aims, his practical labors for the cause of letters stimulated 
the large circle of his personal acquaintances, and formed an appreci- 
able factor in the literary progress of his generation. Mr. Cawein's 
first book. Blooms of the Berry, appeared in 1887. Since then he 
has been a prolific writer, both in prose and verse, the first collected 
edition of his poems, published in 1907, filling five volumes. In his 
own particular province, the poet of what has been called the twi- 
light mood of nature — the mood of moonlight, of whippoorwills, of 
fireflies, of fairy rings — Mr. Cawein was supreme, touching the reali- 
ties of this enchanting world of his with a deeper skill and human 
sympathy than one finds in the more fantastic muse of the author of 
"The Culprit Fay." 

For a time, in The Republic, Mr. Cawein wandered from his 
rightful domain, but in his next volume of verse. Minions of the Moon,. 
he returned to it with no lessening of his old-time spirituality and 
delicacy of touch. It is as the poet of nature that he will long be 
remembered. In this connection it is interesting to learn that his 
last book, partly prose, partly verse, will soon be published under the 
title The Poet and Nature. 



1914, December 17, New York, The Nation: A Western 
Nature Poet. 

The distinction of Madison Cawein, whose death is announced 
from Louisville, was as the best poet of nature the West has pro- 
duced, and one of the best in the last generation in America; it was 
his limitation that he was little but a nature-poet. Of the fact that 
his work lay virtually in one field the critics have indeed made too 
much. It is true that his volumes. Myth and Romance, Weeds by the 
Wall, A Voice on the Wind, Kentucky Poems, Days and Dreams, 
are all chiefly of nature, often its mythological or romantic associa- 
tions, but more often purely descriptive — written to render an 
aesthetic picture. But his descriptions are not purely external or 
wanting in poetic insight, and their recurrence is far from tiresome. 

Invited to estimate Cawein's poetry, Mr. Howells tells us he 
asked, "Why always nature poems? Why not human-nature poems?" 

"But in seizing upon an objection so obvious that I ought to 
have known it was superficial, I had wronged a poet who had never 

153 



Madison Cawein 

done me harm in the very terms and conditions of his being a poet. 
I had made his reproach what ought to have been his finest praise, 
what is always the praise of poetry when it is not artificial and formal. 
I ought to have said, as I had seen, that not one of his lovely land- 
scapes in which I could see no human figure but thrilled with a human 
presence penetrating to it from his most sensitive and subtle spirit 
until it was all but painfully alive with memories, with regrets, with 
longings, with hopes, with all that from time to time mutably con- 
stitutes us men and women, and yet keeps us children." 

And it could be pointed out that the poet at times stepped suc- 
cessfully outside the narrower circle. "The Feud" is a dramatic 
episode of Kentucky; "Ku Klux" is as graphic; there are one or two 
real dramas, and lyrics in numbers — for Cawein was over-prolific — 
full of a rather pensive interpretation of youthful romance, with its 
incidents chosen impartially from Greece, England, the Germany 
of his ancestors, or Kentucky. 

To analyze the qualities which made Cawein unique in his des- 
criptions of Western nature, and discover why, among the Hays, 
Hoveys, Rileys, Piatts, Fieldses, Maurice Thompsons, he should 
hold his own place, is an interesting inquiry. No other had either 
his taste for nature or his exact eye. In this scientific age, when 
Maeterlinck makes an exhaustive study of the bee an illustration of 
his poetic philosophy, and Tennyson's successors know not only 
that ash-buds are black early in March, but many other botanical 
facts, he was our one distinctive poet-naturalist. Of dittany and the 
yellow puccoon he has written exactly, of mallow, ironweed, bluet, 
and jewel-weed, the cohosh, the bell-flower, the oxalis, the Indian-pipe; 
from his books a manual of Kentucky flora and fauna might be made. 
He is helped by a sense of the atmosphere of place that pervades his 
larger landscapes; and by a knack for the felicitous epithet — an in- 
spiration, Howells remarked, "for the right word, and the courage 
of it, so that though in the first instant you may be challenged, you 
may be revolted, by something you thought uncouth, you are pres- 
ently overcome by the happy bravery of it." Both appear in "The 
Rain-crow:" 

Can freckled August — drowsing warm and blonde 
Beside a wheat-shock in the white-topped mead, 
In her hot hair the oxeyed daisies wound — 
O bird of rain, lend aught but sleepy heed 
To thee? When no plumed weed, no feathered seed 
Blows by her; and no ripple breaks the pond. 
That gleams like flint within its rim of grasses. 
Through which the dragonfly forever passes 
Like splintered diamond? 



154 



The Death of Cawein 

Drought weighs the trees, and from the farmhouse eaves 
The locust, pulse-beat of the summer day. 
Throbs; and the lane that shambles under leaves 
Limp with the heat — a league of rutty way — 
Is lost in dust; and sultry scents of hay 
Breathe from the panting meadows heaped with sheaves — 
Now, now, O bird, what hint is there of rain. 
In thirsty meadow or on burning plain 
That thy keen eye perceives? 

And this brief quotation gives little hint of Cawein's fidelity 
as a naturalist. 

Something like this zest for nature we have had from the Merrimac 
and Hudson — why not more from the Wabash and Mississippi? 
In explanation of Cawein's narrow vein, the natural theory has been 
the thinness of the social world about him ; he was driven to nature- 
verse by the same want of background and history of which Hawthorne 
complained at an earlier period in the East. But so great is the 
modern Western solicitude for a poet to express its native social 
ideals and spirit that the theory hardly holds. What is the glory 
that is attributed to Riley? That his very sentimentality is the 
expression of a sectional attribute, that his verse is rooted in the 
soil by its dialect and content. Piatt's Western Windows were 
acclaimed because they looked out on real Western life. Hay's 
Pike County Ballads had historical truth. In reality. Western 
poetry has been less inclined to neglect history and life for nature 
than to do the opposite ; and this tendency is today as strong as ever. 

1914, December 19, Boston, The Transcript: The impress left 
UPON American Literature by the late Madison Cawein. 
By Edward J. O'Brien. 

The sudden death last Monday of Madison Cawein represents 
a loss to American literature greater in some respects than the actual 
poetic merit of his work might seem to merit, for he occupied a 
significant position as interpreter to the rest of America of certain 
aspects of life and nature in Kentucky which are rapidly becoming 
part of a lost tradition, though in their day they did much to influ- 
ence our national letters. 

The work in poetry of Madison Cawein is the most successful 
interpretation of the Middle South's feeling for nature that we have, if 
we except the novels of James Lane Allen, and they embody a spirit 
of imaginative fantasy which Mr. Allen's work does not always possess. 
It is now many years since Mr. Edmund Gosse hailed an English 
selection of Mr. Cawein's Kentucky Poems as one of the finest 

155 



Madison Cawein 

portrayals of landscape that our letters could show. These poems, 
which probably represent Mr. Cawein's best feeling and expression, 
are the fine interpretation of a literary pantheism, which may have 
lacked subtlety, but which never could be said to be insincere in 
mirroring nature in its most shy and elusive moods. The beauty of 
wood life to Mr. Cawein meant a return to the old Greek feeling of 
nature worship, passionately voiced in the wind and in running 
streams. He felt the sympathy of trees, and made the reader feel 
the essential wood magic in all its secrecy, in a life peopled with dryads, 
nymphs and satyrs, cruel and kind alternately as nature is cruel and 
kind, and jealous of human challenge and invasion. 

In all his work, implicit in his earliest volumes as well as in the 
very latest of his fairy plays and poems, the reader was conscious of 
a childish simplicity which forebore to question nature, and in the 
continuous search for reality in silent places tended to repudiate, 
perhaps unhappily for his creative vision, the human passions of 
his race and time. When these touched him as a man they seldom 
flowered in infectious poetry, for the contagion of his imaginative 
persuasiveness was ever reserved for wild life and quiet, secluded 
haunts. 

If Mr. Cawein always sought fairyland, it cannot truthfully be 
said that he found it completely. The fairyland of his poetry is 
one of doubt and questioning, and the scientific spirit in its earlier 
manifestations which he never outgrew raised barriers of fact which 
he never succeeded in penetrating to his satisfaction. I remember 
a letter to me in which he said, apropos of a poem which he enclosed, 
that he believed in dryads and fairies but that he had never seen one, 
as if some apology were necessary for what he had seen imaginatively. 
He always desired to touch objectively the imaginative beauties of 
which he had so real a subjective experience. 

This accounts for the sadness of incomplete achievement which 
is never absent from his best poetry, a kind of spiritual nostalgia 
which made him feel that he was born out of his age in a materialistic 
environment where the old gods might not live and fact continually 
warred on fancy. Mr. Cawein never revealed a creative imagination 
which could pierce satisfactorily through the mists of material sub- 
stance to the essential verities which lay behind them. But his 
fancy was incomparable and well-nigh inexhaustible in its romantic 
fecundity. In Kentucky he found an individual landscape which 
he could people with his fancy, and in this kind of creation he was 
assisted by an absence of self-conscious environment which is now 
almost impossible of attainment in the populous countryside of the 
older countries, by reason of which the passionate nature-poet is so 
rare in England and our own eastern seaboard today. His peculiar 
service to our literature was two-fold; he represented our wood-life 
adequately and sympathetically in charming landscape with a fine 

156 



The Death of Cawein 

sense of proportion and detail and he stood to the Middle South as a 
cultural symbol of attainment, which prompted poetic ambition and 
inspired in many others notable poetic fulfilment. 

In the latter capacity, his life in Louisville made him the chief 
spokesman of Kentucky's literary aspiration, and his comparatively 
recent election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters reaffirmed 
this distinction happily and in no uncertain terms. That it was his 
desire, if not his happy achievement, to express adequately the human 
striving of our national consciousness toward an adequate democratic 
fulfilment, the ode published this year in the Proceedings of the 
National Institute bears conscientious witness. 

Mr. Cawein's poetry was woven compact of illusion. But it 
was an illusion of the poet's weaving rather than of the nature which 
he sought to glorify. He was always a little self-conscious in his 
attempts at imaginative persuasion. As his work grew older with 
the years, from the early volumes of a quarter of a century ago to the 
volume entitled The Poet and Nature and the Morning Road, 
issued this month, it would almost seem a pageant of the seasons, 
opening with the fresh, confident pipings of spring, maturing with 
the growth of the season into the fine luxuriance of summer, which 
insensibly ripened toward the end into the mellow, calm and thought- 
ful beauty of Indian summer, suggestive in its fine poetic flavor of 
much the magic of his early spring. 

One could never place his poems in a New England setting. 
They are too accurate in their landscape features for that, and they 
possess a luxuriance of growth which is alien to the hardihood of our 
northern climate. His poetry is the poetry of Kentucky, and when 
he would desert it for fairyland, we find that his fairyland has a 
Kentucky landscape. Although he saw beauty lightly if lovingly 
in his earlier work, in his later volumes there was manifest a striving 
toward a deeper reading of earth than American poetry had previously 
produced, so that his work took on qualities of reflection and so- 
briety which made it seem all the more actual in its poetic expression 
of natural relations. Nature was alive with personalities for him 
always, but latterly these personalities were invested with their 
peculiar God-like attributes in a manner which suggested no longer 
the early blind worship of his heart. 

The poet's animistic feeling was closely akin to that of nature's 
other passionate interpreter in our day, Algernon Blackwood. Like 
Mr. Blackwood, he felt a passionate need of expression for the wor- 
ship of beauty which possessed him, and this perhaps accounts for 
the unhappy facility and frequency of his work. Few American poets 
suffer more from overproduction, and demand so rigorous a selection 
of poems to define their position. His Complete Poetical Works were 
issued a few years ago in five large volumes, and since then he has 
added several volumes to them, all possessing qualities of high distinc- 

157 



Madison C aw e in 

tion, and all suffering from indiscriminate inclusiveness. It will be 
a service of considerable importance to American poetry to cull the 
best of his poems in a single volume, and thus give his work a chance 
of a much wider audience than it has hitherto been able to achieve. 
This is to be said in spite of the previously edited volume of selected 
poems, which is now obsolete, though entirely adequate for the period 
which it represents. 

No estimate of Mr. Cawein's personality and achievement 
would be complete which neglected to call attention to the poet's 
fondness for children, whom he endowed with much fairy poetry 
written from their point of view. His sympathy for children was 
evinced in his very latest volume, which is entitled The Poet and Nature: 
What He Saw and What He Heard. It is designed to encourage a 
love of poetry in children by appealing to their natural sensibilities 
as they walk through the woods and fields. 

Madison Cawein earned well the esteem of his generation, and 
was ever a generous friend to poets and poetry, as well as to litera- 
ture in its other many-sided aspects. He aimed to be representative, 
and achieved leadership. Of the many poets Kentucky has produced, 
some of whom are of considerable distinction, he is the man who will 
be longest remembered in association with his native State. For he 
occupied as definite a relation toward it as Whittier occupied toward 
New England or Joaquin Miller toward California. 

His imaginative spirit was akin to Keats' in its sensuous appre- 
hension of reality, but it had qualities of American homeliness which 
were essentially individual to him, and he never outgrew the fine 
adventurous self-reliance of the pioneer. Seen in critical perspective 
by the generation which follows ours, he will probably be adjudged 
one of the fine interpreters of a vanishing spirit in an otherwise 
materialistic age. 

1914, December 26, London, Athenaeum: 

Mr. Madison Cawein, whose death is announced in the New York 
Nation of the tenth instant, was one of the most prolific American 
poets of the day, and produced over twenty volumes. His work was 
especially appreciated in his own State of Kentucky. His Kentucky 
Poems were introduced to the English readers by Mr. Gosse in 1902, 
and recently his own selection of his verse was published with a 
foreword by Mr. W. D. Howells. 

1914, December, New York, The Poetry Society of America Bulletin: 

Since the publication of the last Bulletin the Society has suf- 
fered a great loss in the death of one of its truest poets and most 
distinguished charter members, Madison Cawein. Mr. Cawein was 

158 



The Death of Cawein 

distinctly the creator of his own field. From the publication, in 1887, 
of his first little volume, Blooms of the Berry, he had made himself the 
intimate, almost mystic comrade of nature. "God has a few of us 
whom He whispers in the ear," might be said of him as of Abt Vogler. 
He had the ecstatic sense of the visible world; the mystery of it, 
the marvel of it, never left him. Beauty was his religion and he spent 
his life learning the ways and moods of nature and declaring them 
in poetry rich with imagination. He had the naturalist's eagerness 
for truth and one might explore the Kentucky woods and fields with 
a volume of his poetry as a handbook and find the least-regarded 
flower minutely and exquisitely celebrated. In his most affluent 
fancy his eye never left the fact and the accuracy of his observation 
gives his nature work a background which adds greatly to its value. 
Not only the phenomena of nature absorbed him, but the tiniest 
creatures shared in his sympathy and love. The tree-toad and the 
rain-crow inspired his two most perfect poems, unless it be the twilight 
moth, gnome-wrought of moonbeam-fluff and gossamer, a poem catch- 
ing in words that delicacy which words almost profane. 

Mr. Cawein was in New York for the recent session of the 
National Institute of Arts and Letters and attended the last meeting 
of the Poetry Society. His evident ill health was a matter of concern 
to his friends but no one was prepared for so speedy a termination 
to a life so rich in beauty and service. For Mr. Cawein's character 
was one with his art; he had a genius for discovering excellencies and 
nothing gave him so much joy as some fine achievement on the part 
of his fellow poets. Indeed a gentler, truer, more generous spirit 
than that of Madison Cawein could hardly have been found and his 
life will always be a cherished memory to his friends. 

The Executive Committee of the Society passed the following 
resolution: Whereas, the death of Madison Cawein, a charter member 
of this Society, has brought grief to all friends of poetry, be it there- 
fore. Resolved, that the Poetry Society of America express its deep 
regret for this great loss to literature and the personal grief of its 
members at the departure among them of a man whom they loved. 



1915, January i, Chicago, The Dial: 

Madison Cawein, who died December 8, 1914, at the age of 
forty-nine, was a poet richly endowed with the gift of interpreting 
nature in verse. The aspects of nature presented in his verse were 
those of his native State of Kentucky, where he lived all his life. 
Exuberantly productive from his early manhood to the time of his 
premature death, Cawein published more than a score of books of 
verses. Eight years ago a Complete Edition of his poems, which was 
published with an introduction by Mr. Edmund Gosse, required 

159 



Madison Cawein 

five substantial volumes. Since then the additions to his poetic 
produce have been considerable. A selection of his poems with a 
sympathetic preface by Mr. William Dean Howells was recently 
published. 



191 5> January 2, New York, Collier's Weekly: Kentucky has 

LOST HER POET. 

In the passing of Madison Cawein, one of this country's 
sweetest voices is hushed. Cawein shared the lot of earlier Southern 
poets in never achieving a nation-wide popularity. Sweet Sixteen 
did not paste his verses in her scrapbook, ardent undergraduates 
did not quote him, clubs of idle women never searched for his 
concealed meanings. Neither did national topics nor pulsing human 
passions move him to such quick response as did Nature — the world 
of birds and bees, of apple blossoms and wood violets. He was a 
child of the Wordsworthian tradition. But, as Mr. Howells once 
said, though his landscape might contain no human figure, it "thrilled 
with a human presence." In seven lines Cawein summed up a large 
part of his own philosophy [From "Epilogue" Minions of the Moon]: 

Could we attain that Land of Faerie, 

Here in the flesh, what starry certitudes 

Of loveliness were ours! what mastery 

Of beauty and the dream that still eludes! 

What clearer vision ! Ours were then the key 

To Mystery, that Nature jealously 

Locks in her heart of hearts among the woods. 

In the flesh he came close to attainment of that enchanted domain. In 
the spirit he still leads on toward those starry certitudes. 



1915, January, Chicago. Poetry — A Magazine of Verse: 

The death of Madison Cawein, which occurred on the eighth of 
December in Louisville, is a deep grief to his many friends and 
admirers. Born at Louisville in 1865, he was still a young man 
when Mr. Howells' warm greeting of his first book of verse gave him 
an authoritative introduction to American readers. Since then he 
has published many small volumes, which were united in 1907 in his 
Complete Poetical Works (five volumes). Three years later Mr. 
Howells reaffirmed his early praise of the poet in an introduction to 
a volume of selections. 

160 



The Death of Cawein 

This is not the moment to attempt a critical review of Madison 
Cawein's work. Many of his poems have been much quoted and 
dearly loved, and time, no doubt, will select a few for permanent 
honor in the anthologies of American song. Meantime we can only 
regret his too early death, and recall the gracious charm, the fine 
gentleness of his character. Poetry is fortunate in being able to 
offer to its readers one of his most recent poems, "The Troubadour." 



1915, January, New York. The Writer's Bulletin: Madison Cawein. 

One day in the early past summer, the editor of The Writer's 
Bulletin came to her office to find two poets awaiting her — Clinton 
Scollard, an old poet friend, who had brought Madison Cawein, of 
Louisville, Kentucky, to make a call while visiting in the city, being 
briefly in New York to attend a gathering of poets. It was pleasant 
to meet Madison Cawein, a man of small, slight stature, with eyes 
that twinkled as though a sense of humor was not lacking in the 
poet's make-up, a face of sweet expression, a hand-clasp sincere, and 
a friendliness for all who followed his craft that showed itself plainly 
as he chatted of his work and the work of other poets. 

Now Madison Cawein has left us. Since the last issue of the 
Bulletin went to press we have received news of his passing on. Madi- 
son Cawein did not live to see a bound copy of his latest book of verse, 
just now come from the press, bearing the double title of The Poet and 
Nature and the Morning Road, the latter part of the title being that 
of a poem which first appeared in the May, 19 14, issue of The Writer's 
Bulletin. In this last book of Madison Cawein's there are poems 
representing his earlier work as well as those of his riper art, and so 
much that is personal as to constitute a poetic autobiography. 

Madison Cawein was one with the spirit of nature, following her 
understandingly everywhere, loving every living thing, seeing with 
eyes eager for truth. In "The Morning Road" perhaps the poet 
shows more of that subtle sense of things half hidden from mortal 
eyes than in any of his poems. It is the very essence of the mysticism 
of nature. We here reprint this lovely poem for the benefit of those 
true poetry lovers who may not have seen the poem when we first 
presented it: 

The Morning drew a shawl 

Of rosy lace around her, 
And by the wood's high wall 
Stood smiling, bright and tall. 
When I, who heard her call, 

Went forth and found her. 

161 



Madison C aw e in 

Upon the sun-kissed hill, 

And in the vale below, 
She laid a daffodil, 
Golden and chaste and still. 
And on the water-mill 

A rose of snow. 

She said: "At last you've come, 
And left the world's carouse. 

The palace and the slum ; 

No more shall soul be dumb; 

I'll show you your new home, 
A pleasant house." 

She took me by the heart. 

And led a magic way. 
By paths that are a part 
Of Faeryland, and start 
From the forgotten mart 

Of Yesterday. 

And when we'd gone a mile. 

She pointed me a place 
Where overhung a smile; 
And on its sill and stile 
A promise, without guile, 

As of a face. 

And in the doorway there, 

A baby at her breast. 
One stood, quite young and fair, 
Peace, with the golden hair. 
Peace, that knows naught of care, 

But only rest. 

I knew at once 'twas she, 
For whom all mortals long. 

Who with Simplicity, 

And Faith, that's sweet to see, 

Dwells, guarding constantly 
Her child named Song. 

She bade me enter in ; 

Sit by her quiet fire; 
Forget the world of din. 
And, safe from hate and sin, 
With her and Song to win 

My heart's desire. 

162 



The Death of C awe in 

1914, December 12, Louisville Evening Post: [Current Opinion, 
New York, February, 191 5: "There are gains for all our 
losses." The death of Madison Cawein is a distinct loss to 
America — he was still in the forties — but a death that inspires 
such a beautiful elegy as the following, by Miss Anderson, 
published in the Louisville Evening Post, cannot be viewed as 
a total loss.] "Madison Cawein, 1865-1914," by Margaret 
Steele Anderson. 

The wind makes moan, the water runneth chill; 

I hear the nymphs go crying through the brake; 
And roaming mournfully from hill to hill 

The maenads all are silent for his sake! 

He loved thy pipe, O wreathed and piping Pan! 

So play'st thou sadly, lone within thine hollow; 
He was thy blood, if ever mortal man. 

Therefore thou weepest — yea, and thou, Apollo! 

But O, the grieving of the Little Things, 

Above the pipe and lyre, throughout the woods! 

The beating of a thousand airy wings. 
The cry of all the fragile multitudes! 

The moth flits desolate, the tree-toad calls, 

Telling the sorrow of the elf and fay; 
The cricket, little harper of the walls, 

Puts up his harp — hath quite forgot to play ! 

And risen on these winter paths anew. 

The wilding blossoms make a tender sound; 

The purple weed, the morning-glory blue. 
And all the timid darlings of the ground! 

Here, here the pain is sharpest! For he walked 

As one of these — and they knew naught of fear, 

But told him daily happenings and talked 
Their lovely secrets in his list'ning ear! 

Yet we do bid them grieve, and tell their grief; 

Else were they thankless, else were all untrue ; 
O wind and stream, O bee and bird and leaf. 

Mourn for your poet, with a long adieu! 



163 



Madison C aw e in 

1914, December 16, New York Sun: "In Memory of Madison 
Cawein," by Clinton Scollard, 

[In a letter to me Mr. Scollard, commenting on the following 
poem, wrote: "As we bade one another good-bye in New York 
Madison said 'Till Spring, Clinton, Till Spring' * * * and a few 
days later I heard of his death."] 

Ah, who, ah, who may understand 

The secrets veiled from mortal eye? 

But yesterday I held his hand, 
And said, "Goodbye!" 

"Goodbye till Spring!" And now, and now, 
When no flowers bloom, and no birds sing, 

And wild winds sway the barren bough, 
For him 'tis Spring. 

Beauty he worshiped as a creed. 

Of life the ever vital part; 
He held to it in word and deed. 

In aim and art. 

His spirit was as pure as air; 

His nature tender and yet strong; 
And all things lovely, all things fair. 

Live in his song. 

But yesterday I held his hand. 

And said "Goodbye!" Ah bitter sting! 

And yet I know, in some far land, 
With him 'tis Spring! 



164 



VII 

THE CAWEIN FAMILY 

Dr. William Cawein, father of Madison Cawein, was born in 
Miihlhofen, Rhenish Palatinate, Germany, December ii, 1827; 
about 1853 he came to Louisville, direct form Germany, and died in 
Louisville, March 7, 1901. He was a son of Daniel Cawein and 
Catherine Bangert. Catherine Bangert was a daughter of Jacob Bangert 
and Anna Maria Herancour. Anna Maria Herancour was a daughter of 
William Herancour, a granddaughter of Paul Herancour and a 
great-granddaughter of Jean de Herancour who emigrated, in 1685, 
from Paris, France, to Miihlhofen, Germany, where many of his 
descendants still live. 

Daniel Cawein and his wife, Catherine Bangert, were the parents 
of eight children, all of whom were born in Miihlhofen, and all of 
whom, except Jacob and Anna Maria, emigrated to America: 

1 Jacob Cawein, who married Minnie Nutzloch. 

2 Anna Maria Cawein, who married Henry Bantz. 

3 John Cawein, who married Louise R. Stelsly, and among 

whose children were Mrs. Louise (Charles G.) Roth and 
Mrs. Ida K. (George W.) Bardin. Charles G. Roth was the 
father of Charles G. and John C. Roth. 

4 Dr. William Cawein who married Christiana Stelsly, and 

among whose children was Madison Cawein, 

5 Philip Cawein, who married Lena Miller. 

6 Daniel Cawein, who married Julia Stelsly; they were the 

parents of Frederick W. Cawein and Mrs. Rose (William) 
Osborne. 

7 Eva Cawein, who never married. 

8 Elizabeth Cawein, who married Robert Rissie. 

Mrs. William Cawein, mother of Madison Cawein, was born 
June 22, 1839. She lived in Louisville practically all of her life, and 
died in Philadelphia, March 19, 191 1. She was a daughter of John 
G. Stelsly (or Stelsley) and his wife, Rosina, natives of Swabia, Wur- 
temberg, Germany. The National Cyclopedia of American Biography, 

165 



Madison C aw e in 

published in 1898, says: "Madison Cawein's maternal grandfather 
was a German officer of cavalry who served in Napoleon's later 
campaigns, and afterwards, when the last determined effort was made 
to lift the French yoke from the neck of Europe, under the King of 
Wurtemberg. On his honorable discharge from the army, he emigrated 
to America, with his wife, and lived first in Ohio and Indiana, and 
later in Louisville, where Mr. Cawein's mother was born." Mr. and 
Mrs. John G. Stelsly were the parents of seven children. It is said by 
some of their descendants that the oldest of the Stelsly children was 
born in Germany, and the others in Ohio or Indiana. Another version 
has it that all of the children were born in America and that the 
younger ones were born in Kentucky. According to Madison Cawein's 
version his mother was born in Louisville : 

1 Catherine Stelsly, who, after the death of her first husband, 

George F. Sigel, married William M. Walker. 

2 Louise R. Stelsly, who married John Cawein. 

3 Carrie Stelsly, who married John Kohlepp. 

4 Christiana, or Christina, who married Dr. William Cawein, 

and among whose children was Madison Cawein. After 
the death of Dr. Cawein she married J. Henry Doerr. 

5 Jacob Stelsly, who died in 1854, aged eleven years. 

6 Julia Stelsly, who married Daniel Cawein. 

7 John Stelsly, who married Carrie Wunch. 

Dr. William Cawein and Christiana Stelsly, the parents of 
Madison Cawein, were married in Louisville, November 22, 1855, by 
Reverend Charles L. Daubert, with George Jacob Stork and Josephine 
Freyhoefer acting as groomsman and bridesmaid. Thus three of the 
Cawein brothers married three of the Stelsly sisters. Dr. and Mrs. 
William Cawein were the parents of six children: 

1 Lula R. Cawein, born February 16, 1857, and died in infancy. 

2 John Daniel Cawein, born 1858, married Laura Hickson, 

died 1916; no children. 

3 William Conrad Cawein, born 1861, never married, died 1919. 

4 Dr. Charles Lee Cawein, born 1863, who married Emily 

Girdler, and who are the parents of Charles G. Cawein. 

5 Madison Julius Cawein, born March 23, 1865, died December 

8, 1914; married June 4, 1903, to Gertrude F. McKelvey 
who was born December 8, 1873, and died April 16, 1918. 
They were the parents of Preston Hamilton Cawein who 
was born in Louisville March 18, 1904, and whose name 
was officially changed, in 191 7, to Madison Cawein — 
Madison Cawein II. 

6 Lilian Louise Cawein, born 1867, married John F. Behney, 

died 1912; no children. 

166 



VIII 
A POSTHUMOUS AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

In his letters to his friends Cawein reveals intimate glimpses 
of his personality and of his life and works. Those here published — 
some quoted in full, others in part — are arranged in chronological 
order and presented under the arbitrary caption, "A Posthumous 
Autobiography." 

Cawein kept no copies of letters he wrote, nor preserved 
any data pertaining to them. Furthermore, having destroyed, given 
away or otherwise disposed of practically all of the letters he received, 
there remained very little to indicate with whom he had corresponded. 
In order to procure some written by him an open appeal was made 
through the columns of the Louisville press, The Bulletin of the Poetry 
Society of America, Poetry — a Magazine of Verse, and The Mississippi 
Valley Historical Review. These published notices, supplemented by 
personal inquiry among his friends or their literary executors, resulted 
in the submission of more than 400 of his letters. A perusal of them 
showed that they touched on practically every important act and 
angle of his life known to me through other sources. The letters 
submitted may be far from the total number written; they neverthe- 
less offered ample material for the compilation of an autobiography. 
It is quite probable that more letters would have served simply to add 
to the sidelights, or to verify and amplify some of the facts here quoted. 

Cawein little suspected that by writing a little news to this or 
to that friend, or by giving some comments on this or on that subject, 
he was, month after month and year after year, for twenty-eight 
years, recording material, much of which would be assembled and 
some day published. 

No one, as far as is known, preserved all of the letters received 
from Cawein. Robert E. Lee Gibson, of St. Louis, kept about 200, 
but it is evident that he did not save all. Their correspondence 
began in July, 1893, when Mr. Gibson wrote regarding some of his 
own poems. A few years later the two men met for the first time, and 
thereafter frequently visited each other. They carried on a more or 

167 



Madison C aw e in 

less active correspondence up to the time of Mr. Cawein's death — a 
period of about twenty years. They were the truest of friends. Mr. 
Cawein had many admirers, but if any one among them may be said 
to have set him upon the highest pedestal, Mr. Gibson is that one. 
Mr. Gibson was a native of Missouri and spent most of his time in 
St. Louis. He was born in 1864 and died in 1917. For many years 
he was an official of the St. Louis City Insane Asylum. He wrote 
several books of poems. Many of his poems were submitted to Mr. 
Cawein before they were offered for publication. The discussions 
pertaining to them form a considerable part of their correspondence. 
Only a few of Mr. Cawein's criticisms and comments on Mr. Gibson's 
poems are here quoted; these are typical of the many others. Had 
Mr. Gibson preserved all of his letters and kept notes on his conversa- 
tions with the poet, a complete life of Cawein, in all probability, 
could have been compiled based on these two sources alone. More 
than one-half the correspondence here quoted was written to Mr. 
Gibson. 

Mr. Gibson's collection of Cawein letters contains not only the 
largest number, but is also the most complete in the sense that he 
saved a greater percent than any other person. Less than about one- 
third are missing. From the standpoint of completeness every col- 
lection known to me has its own peculiar features. The John Fox, Jr. 
collection extends from 1888, its beginning, down to about 1894, 
although the two men exchanged many letters after that year. On 
the other hand there are no letters to James Whitcomb Riley earlier 
than 1897, or about five years after Mr. Cawein began writing to the 
Hoosier poet. 

The intimacy that existed between Mr. Cawein and the persons 
to whom he wrote can be judged by the contents of the letters, but 
not by the numbers here noted — except in the case of Mr. Gibson, to 
whom he wrote the greatest number and the most intimate letters. 
For example, Clinton Scollard, of New York, one of his best friends, 
is represented by only one letter, Dr. Henry Van Dyke, Eric Pape 
and Edmund Clarence Stedman by only a few, and Edmund Gosse 
by none at all. Mr. Cawein seldom wrote to his friends in his home 
town, for spending most of his time in Louisville and its immediate 
vicinity, he saw them often. Nor are there any letters to Mrs. Cawein, 
before or after her marriage. 

Before he met or began to court the girl who became his wife, he 
sent a number of love poems, or rather letter-poems to some of his 
young women friends. It would seem quite probable from his ardent 
imagination and poetry that he also wrote a few love letters in prose. 
None, however, has been submitted. Furthermore, no person in- 
terviewed by me recalled ever receiving from the poet what might be 
termed an attempt at a love letter in prose. A number received letter- 
poems that evidently were intended as love notes expressing personal 

168 



A Posthumous Autobio graphy 

admiration for the persons to whom they were sent. Telephones were 
not in general use until about the year 1895, and the writing of long 
and short messages, on any and all subjects, was therefore a common 
practice. During the ten years following his graduation from high 
school, 1 886-1 896, he called on many of his girl friends. His calls, I 
infer, were about as numerous as those of any other normal young 
man, but his written messages were either an expression of admira- 
tion in the form of verse, or a serious letter in prose on the subject 
of literature. No early notes or letters, other than the few here quoted, 
are known to have been preserved. One is led to surmise that most, 
if not all, of his early notes were prompted far more by an interest in 
the promoting of poetry than in the making of love. The adage that 
"every man has had more than one love affair" applies to Mr. Cawein. 
He himself wrote in the Questionnaire prepared for Mr. Thum that 
he had had "several love affairs," but only "one supreme one." 
The indications are that it was in his poems and letter-poems — not in 
his prose notes or letters — that he gave expression to the love that 
dwelt in his heart. Many of his early published poems show he had 
more than a passing acquaintance with Cupid. With the exception 
of a few there is nothing to indicate to what persons these love poems 
were dedicated. 

Mr. Cawein was thirty-two years of age when, in 1897, he began 
his first courtship with Miss Gertrude F. McKelvey, a girl eight 
years younger than himself, and to whom he was married in 1903, 
after overcoming various rivals. If she received any letters from him — 
other than a few notes relative to engagements — they were not pre- 
served. She, however, saved eighteen of the poems that were written 
on his personal stationery, in his own hand and dedicated "To Ger- 
trude." All were published in his books within a year or two after 
they were presented to her. 

For the benefit of the reader who may wish to study the poet as 
a lover through the poems that are definitely identified as some 
written to the girl who became his wife, their titles and dates are 
here given. 

1897: November 16, There Was a Rose; December 7, Carissima 
Mea. 1898; January 29, Why Should I Pine? February 2, When 
Lydia Smiles; March 29, Witnesses; April 20, The Artist; April — , 
Will You Forget; May 6, In May; May 13, Restraint; May 26, 
Words; June ii. Reason; August 26, Evasion; September 21, Her 
Portrait; October 3, Transubstantiation; My Lady of Verne. 1900: 
March 12, Reed Call for April; August 20, Love and Loss. 1901: 
Meeting and Parting. 

All of Mr. Cawein's early letters and some of his later ones are 
signed "M. J. Cawein" or "Madison J. Cawein." His first four books 
and his poems published in newspapers and magazines previous to 
about 1891 include the "J" in his name. When he was about twenty- 

169 



Madison C awe in 

six years old he discontinued using the "J" i" ^is name as a writer. 
This change was made at the suggestion of WilHam Dean Howells 
who called his attention to the fact that there would be more euphony 
and a stronger brevity for the public effect in the name "Madison 
Cawein" than in "Madison J. Cawein." He always retained the "J" 
in his signature to business documents. 

This posthumous autobiography is compiled from letters selected 
from among those written by Cawein to the following persons: 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Boston; 

John F. Behney, Philadelphia; 

Mary E. Cardwill, New Albany, Indiana; 

Frederick W. Cawein, Louisville; [Indianapolis, temporarily]; 

Madison (formerly Preston H.) Cawein II, Louisville; 

Dr. Henry A. Cottell, Louisville; 

Mrs. Lillian Sweet Ditto, Louisville; 

Mrs. M. P. Ferris, New York; 

Bert Finck, Louisville; 

John Fox, jr.. Red Oak, Ky. and Big Stone Gap, Virginia; 

Robert E. Lee Gibson, St. Louis; 

Leigh Gordon Giltner, Eminence and Lexington; 

J. Russell Hayes, Swathmore, Pennsylvania; 

William Dean Howells, Boston and New York; 

Thomas S. Jones, Jr., New York; * 

Mrs. Richard W. Knott, Louisville; 

Anna Blanche McGill, Louisville; 

Walter Malone, Memphis; 

Harriet Monroe, Chicago; 

Harrison S. Morris, Philadelphia; 

Ethel Allen Murphy, Louisville; 

Charles Hamilton Musgrove, Louisville; 

Eric Pape, Gloucester and Manchester, Massachusetts; 

John L. Patterson, Louisville; 

Harvey Peake, New Albany, Indiana; 

Cale Young Rice, Louisville; 

James Whitcomb Riley, Indianapolis; 

Jessie B. Rittenhouse, New York; 

Jenny Loring Robbins, Louisville; 

Theodore Roosevelt, Washington, D. C; 

Algernon Rose, Authors' Club, London; 

Charles G. Roth, St. Paul ; 

Lucien V. Rule, Goshen and Louisville; 

Clinton Scollard, New York; 

Hubert G. Shearin, Lexington and Los Angeles; 

Mrs. Elvira Sydnor Miller (Wm. H.) Slaughter, Louisville; 

Mrs. Fanny Stone (F. V.) Smith, Louisville; 

170 



A Posthumous Autobio graphy 

Edmund Clarence Stedman, New York; 

Mrs. Laura Stedman (George M.) Gould, Atlantic City; 

Ivan Swift, Little Traverse Bay, Michigan; 

Edmund W. Taylor, Frankfort; 

Charles Hanson Towne, New York; 

John Wilson Townsend, Lexington; 

Mrs. Alicia Keisker (Albert) Van Buren, Louisville; 

Henry Van Dyke, Princeton, New Jersey; 

Mrs. Charlotte O. (J. L.) Woodbury, Louisville; 

Stark Young, Austin, Texas. 



It may be well to record the names of persons who in response to 
the open appeal or a personal note reported that they had received a 
few letters from Cawein, but had misplaced, lost or destroyed them. 
In their notes they praised Cawein and manifested an interest in this 
effort to compile a book on his life: 

J. Bernhard Alberts, Louisville; Henry Mills Alden, Metuchen, 
New Jersey; James Lane Allen, New York; Young E. Allison, Louis- 
ville; Margaret Steele Anderson, Louisville; Matthew Page Andrews, 
Baltimore; William Archer, London; George A. Babbit, Brownsboro 
(si:: miles from Crestwood), Kentucky; Mrs. Emma Hanson Bartmess, 
Yonkers, New York; Robert W. Brown, Louisville; Mrs. Ida Cawein 
(George W.) Bardin, Louisville; Mrs. Evelyn Snead (Ira S.) Barnett, 
.Louisville, Henry Adams Bellows, Minneapolis; Arthur Christopher 
Benson, Cambridge, England; Mrs. Samuel J. Boldrick, Louisville; 
John Burroughs, Roxbury, New York; George Lee Burton, Louisville, 
Richard Burton, Minneapolis; Mrs. Emma N. Carleton, New Albany, 
Indiana; Dr. Charles L. Cawein, Louisville; Florence Earle Coates, 
Philadelphia; Irvin S. Cobb, New York; Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dou- 
ville Coburn, New York; Timothy Cole, New York; Josiah Henry 
Combs, Hindman, Kentucky; Ingram Crockett, Henderson, Kentucky; 
Mrs. Katharine Whipple Dobbs, Louisville; J. Marvin Eddy, Louis- 
ville; Maurice Francis Egan, Brooklyn; Edmund H. Eitel, Indianapolis; 
Mrs. Sara Teasdale (E. B.) Felsinger, New York; William H. Field, 
New York; Mrs. Lida Waters (Charles Alexander) Fiske, Louisville; 
Hamlin Garland, New York; Marion Forster Gilmore, Louisville; Mrs. 
Hester Higbee (William) Geppert, New York; Abbie Carter Goodloe, 
Louisville; Edmund Gosse, London; John P. Grant, Louisville; Charles 
T. Greve, Cincinnati; Edith H. Griffiths, Ocean Springs, Mississippi; 
Louise Imogen Guiney, Oxford, England; RalphT. Hale, Boston; Credo 
Harris, Louisville; Mrs. Theodore Harris, Versailles, Kentucky; Will 
S. Hays, Louisville; Anna Logan Hopper, Louisville; W. T. H. Howe, 
Cincinnati; Robert Underwood Johnson, New York; Edward 

171 



Madison Cawein 

A. Jonas, Louisville; James B, Kenyon, New York; Joyce Kilmer, 
Larchmont, New York; Mrs. Hortense Flexner (Wyncie) King, 
Louisville; Dr. Henry H. Koehler, Louisville; Andrew Lang, London; 
Richard le Gallienne, Rowayton, Connecticut; Mark H. Liddell, 
Louisville, and Lafayette, Indiana; Edwin Carlisle Litsey, Lebanon, 
Kentucky; Amy M. Longest, Greenville, Kentucky; Sam McKee, 
New York; Mrs. Anna M. (John F.) McKelvey, Louisville; Edward 
J. McDermott, Louisville; Josephine McGill, Louisville; Isaac F. 
Marcosson, Louisville and New York; Edwin Markham, New York; 
Virginia May, Louisville; George Meredith, London; Mrs. AHce 
Meynell, London; Joaquin Miller, Oakland, California; William 
Vaughn Moody, New York; David Morton, Louisville and Morris- 
town, New Jersey; Meredith Nicholson, Indianapolis; Alfred Noyes, 
Princeton, New Jersey; Thomas Nelson Page, Washington, D. C; H. 
H. Peckham, Hiram, Ohio; Herman Rave, New Albany, Indiana; 
Lizette W. Reese, Baltimore, Maryland; Mrs. Abby Meguire (Neill) 
Roach, Louisville; Edwin Arlington Robinson, Peterboro, New 
Hampshire; Harrison Robertson, Louisville; Henry C. Semple, 
Louisville; George T. Settle, Louisville; Frank Dempster Sherman, 
New York; Frederick F. Sherman, New York; Mrs. Hattie Bishop 
(J. B.) Speed, Louisville; R. C. Ballard Thruston, Louisville; Adrienne 
Thum, Louisville; Patty Thum, Louisville; William W. Thum, 
Louisville; Ridgely Torrence, Xenia, Ohio and New York; Mrs. 
Jessie Lemont (Hans) Trausill, New York; W. P. Trent, New York; 
Mrs. Rose M. de Vaux-Royer, New York; W. H. Venable, Cincinnati; 
Lewis A. Walter, Louisville; Henry Watterson, Louisville, and 
Robert Burns Wilson, Frankfort, Kentucky. 

It may be well to record also the names of persons to whom 
personal notes were written asking for letters and other data, but 
from whom no replies were received: 

Bliss Carman, New Caanan, Connecticut; George H. Ellwanger, 
Rochester, New York; Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, Springfield, Illinois; 
Edgar Lee Masters, Chicago; Edward J. O'Brien, Bass River, 
Massachusets; Arthur Symons, Wittersham, England, and Sir 
William Watson, London. 

Only such letters, or parts thereof, that in my opinion bore 
directly or indirectly on the poet's history and his interest in literature, 
were copied. The selections made are presented verbatim. Personal 
and trivial matters are omitted. With few exceptions no letters 
contained statements of a strictly private character. Subjects pre- 
sented are given in full; omissions do not bear on what precedes or 
follows. All letters are in Cawein 's own hand, and, unless otherwise 
indicated, were sent from Louisville. 

172 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

They are in the form of chats written in a free conversational 
style; and, being a serious-minded man, he treated practically all 
subjects, in a more or less serious manner. In their simplicity of 
style and sincerity of purpose they are unique. They reveal the story 
of his aspirations and achievements and of his realized and un- 
fulfilled hopes, and show that his life was one of hard and constant 
work linked with joys and sorrows. They bring many of his friends 
to us. They tell the story of his life. Among many other things they 
are evidences of his interest in and encouragement of other writers, 
especially unknown writers, who submitted their MSS. and books of 
poems to him. 

It is not purposed to discuss any of Cawein's letters, nor the 
various bypaths into which they lead. It may be well, however, to 
comment on the fact that his earliest, so far known, was written about 
two weeks before he finished high school, and that in it he reveals the 
poetic within him and consciously or unconsciously charted the 
literary life he actually pursued up to the day of his death. 



1886, May 30. 

Miss Fanny Stone: You may have some dim recollection of a 
certain youth, who, after undergoing the form of an introduction, 
was kindly granted the enjoyment of your company for some few 
hours. That youth, whether his face remains pleasantly or unpleas- 
antly in your mind, whether his memory be agreeable or otherwise, 
takes the liberty of addressing to you a few lines(?) challenging the 
censure of a frown, or the approval of a smile, but in hopes that it may 
be the latter. 

My dear Miss Stone, after enjoying the harmony of your company 
at the before-mentioned picnic [High School picnic in Central Park] 
and being pleased with the gentleness of your manners, the openness, 
I might say the frankness, of your countenance, in an idle moment, 
contrary to all the forms of etiquette, I have undertaken the writing 
to you of a sort of social letter, perhaps, as I have remarked, to while 
away an hour, or to make an acquaintance so happily begun more 
enduring. I am trusting to the gentleness of your disposition for the 
pardon of my boldness in this, as I remarked, breach of etiquette, and 
for the smothering of all censure which may arise. After having made 
such excuses and begged the indulgence of your kindness to what may 
appear merely dull and trite I launch into the body of my letter. 

From the neighboring church I hear the hymn swelling Godward 
in all the holiness of devotion. It is Sunday. A languor steals over my 
senses, such a languor as that was that hushed the brooding soul 
of the mighty Byron when on Lake Lemon mid the Alps in the storm 
and in the night, when "from peak to peak the rattling crags among 

173 



Madison Cawein 

leapt the live thunder" he cried out to the angry tempest, the bellow- 
ing mountains and the rainy night, — "Most glorious night! Thou 
wert not sent for slumber! let me be a sharer in thy fierce and far 
delight — a portion of the tempest and of thee!" 

That last line [eight words] is majestic, beautiful and sublime. 
Think of being a portion of the war of the elements and riding on the 
living lightnings, mid the shoutings of the thunder. But such is not 
for me; my feeling is quite different, one of an indescribable 
listlessness, the opposite of that given by the bard just quoted: 
I seem floating on the odor of the roses, honeysuckles and syringas 
that quiver around me as I write at the open window. Such I feel a 
mere portion of the universe a dancing sunspark wand'ring mid the 
million leagues of profound space, a pulse of existence, an atom in 
a world of ether, a grain on the far rolling shores of a majestic sea. 

Has it ever been your lot. Miss Stone, when beholding the mighty 
sun slowly setting behind the purple hills of the West through long 
ribs of clouds that bar the horizon, how gorgeously they become 
tricked in glorious and fanciful raiment of airy hues — gold, burning 
gold and silver, opal, ruby, emerald, topaz, onyx and jasper on a wide 
flashing slope of sapphire — emblem of the transit from the darkness 
of one world to the beauty and light of another? Of course I am not a 
preacher and never intend being such; do not for a moment suppose 
from my letter I make any pretensions to the clergy, I am but a youth 
who is the devout worshiper of a god that plants his footsteps on 
the waters, and breathes in the tempest; I am one who knows but 
the church of nature, whose dome is the everlasting forests, whose 
columns are the columns of mighty trees, and whose aisles are the 
far and fair vistas of wild flowered woodlands. With me the clash of 
parties and the world's confusion pass unheeded. I am a disinterested 
spectator. You read and think I am strange; I suppose I am, but I 
am a lover of solitude, and hence I despise baseball, etc., and can 
you blame me? Nature has few enough worshipers, don't you 
think so? Some must turn aside from the wordly pleasures to the 
pleasures scattered profusely at the feet of man and cull ; shall nature 
waste the fragrance of all her roses on the desert air? I hear your faint 
"no," — and bow submissive. Watch nature and you will learn to love 
her, to marvel, as I do — at her workings from her passage as the daisy- 
spangled beauty of Spring fresh in her new green gown to the spotless 
ermine of ice-bearded Winter. But stay — you must excuse me again, 
for I have spoken such as I have spoken in reverence of the day. 

You deem me peculiar, and so I am. I have my fits of melan- 
choly and happiness, perhaps, just as you have, only they may be more 
decided and bold in my case than yours. 

For instance, I do not think that you would weep at hearing a 
soft, sad and haunting piece of music breathing sorrow, despair and 
death in its every note; I do not think that you would weep, at least 

174 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

not materially but spiritually, as I would — my soul might weep 
whereas the rhythmic passion would have but little effect on the ex- 
ternal physical body. Music is one of the greatest pleasures or passions 
with me, as, perhaps, it may be with you. I have often picked up a 
shell from the sea-side and laying the delicate pinky labyrinth of its 
pearly mouth to my ear listened to the rush of a "mystical melody," 
and at such a time my brain has shaped its song to such a rhyme 
fashioning love, disappointment and despair, despair such as finds 
rest only in the grave : 

A nymph rose from the sea, 

Dim, oozy locks had she 
Pushed back by diadem of sparkly foam, 

Wherein there shone three pearls 

Full moony mid her curls; 
She saw full fair thro' ocean's moonlit gloom — 

Ah, woe and woe is me! 

My lover wantonly 
This dripping syren stole to her deep home. 

Thus spake my shell to me, and you if you care may take up any 
chambered nautilus of your collection of shells and hear the same sad 
refrain if you choose. The verse is original with me, for I thought 
why should this shell murmur unless there was some sorrow unspeak- 
able, inexpressible, that weighed down the dim recesses of its soul 
and waned the blush that tinged the beauty of its lips; and so I 
unconsciously wrought the rhyme which I subject to your decision 
whether it is appropriate or not, and you must let me know, verbally 
or writtenly. 

I cannot say why I have written to you. Perhaps it may be simply 
to unburden my thoughts, and that you would be the most fitting 
receptacle for them. My letter, I hope, will find favor in your eyes 
now that your school is closed and there is nothing to mar the serenity 
of the soul. I hope that it will serve you the pleasure of a few moments 
as it has served me the happiness of a half hour, and that under 
favorable conditions you will reply. 

Sincerely yours, Madison J. Cawein. 

[Mrs. Fannie Stone Smith in an interview with me, said that when 
this letter was written she was too young to receive boy callers and 
therefore did not answer it, but thanked Mr. Cawein when, a few 
weeks later, she met him by chance on the street.] 

1886, September 28. 

Miss Elvira Sydnor Miller: Your unexpected letter was indeed 
a surprise to me — an agreeable surprise — to say nothing of the pleasure 

175 



Madison C aw e in 

afforded in its perusal. I must thank you again and again for the 
kind wishes expressed, and feel only too happy to know that my poor 
verses have, perhaps unmeritingly, found approbation in your eyes, 
an approbation of which they well may feel proud. But in your 
letter, you, I think, expressed somewhat of displeasure, or not so much 
pleasure, in my verses on the myths of ancient Greece and Rome, as 
in my latter two. Such a dislike is not unnatural; as these myths 
have been so hackneyed that the trituration of centuries of authors 
has about worn the fabric to a tissue through which one may behold 
the baseness. 

To all Americans, however, poems or sketches of their own 
country, their own manners, customs, etc., their own men and women, 
as you have remarked, are more preferable, for the bare reason that 
such are more original in a novelty which is alien to the Old World. 
That which is most original will survive the longest; and the sources 
of wild beauties of our own country are myriad, hence, why should 
we, like mendicant friars, trudge begging among the misty abodes of 
Europe, gathering up the same old materials gathered up a half cen- 
tury ago to combine them in the same old use in which they were 
combined fifty years ago? This is absurd! 

We may turn to the rising — or rather risen — poet of Kentucky — 
Robert B. Wilson : — here we may behold the subtleties that lie dormant 
all around us as they appear when laid upon the anvil of his intellect 
and subjected to the sledge of genius. But, however this may be, 
one, who has delved in the classics as I have — surely, it is true, super- 
ficially — may find them at times very enticing and fascinating, and 
wielding a power over you like that of the wand of Prospero. Hence 
at times I have found myself seated scribbling about the same old 
worn-out pitiable puppets that Homer and Virgil wrought at, and 
about which a hundred successive bards have written, especially the 
English, of whom we may mention Dobson, Lang, Gosse, etc. Tenny- 
son and Longfellow touched them occasionally, but not to sully the 
whiteness of the Parian as many, myself included, minor bards after 
them have done, but to add additional beauty and grace to their 
pureness. 

But enough. I suppose you weary of my lengthy letter, but I 
somehow forgot myself and have run on farther than I intended. 
I have found much to admire in every poem you have written and 
much to think over, and it is always a pleasure to me to happen upon 
one of your productions which I can enjoy as much as any poem of 
Ingelow, Browning or Rossetti, for "like angel visits few and far 
between" they are the more welcome and the more to be appreciated. 

Hoping that your literary life, already so auspiciously entered 
upon, may develop beyond the expectation of your dreams — for what 
poet has not his dreams — I am, most sincerely yours, Madison J. 
Cawein. 

176 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

1887, June 20. 

Miss Lillian Sweet: Forgive me if I again embarrass you with 
the present of a book; however, the mere fact that I wish you to enjoy 
the beauties of Tennyson as I have, will afford sufficient justification 
for the action. Read him and you will love him, for every poem is 
a precious gem. I glanced over the volume to refresh my memory 
a little; it is not complete, as you will perceive, but contains all of 
his happiest lyrics. The serenade in "Maud" haunts me still, especi- 
ally that verse, — I have it by heart, — that says: 

"Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls. 
Come hither, the dances are done; 
In gloss of satins and glimmer of pearls, 

Queen Lily and Rose in one; 
Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls. 
To the flowers and be their sun." * * * 

1887, June 28. 

Miss Lillian Sweet: I am afraid that I astonished, if not offended 
you last Sunday with the vapidity and stupidity of my talk, and 
therefore must tender you an apology and crave forgiveness. I do 
not often get that way, believe me, and when I do it may be ascribed 
to obvious causes producing diverse effects — e. g. the atmospheres, 
especially when impregnated with a great amount of dust, or ozone, 
the aroma of trees or flowers, ideas which have just originated through 
recent readings, music and, last and most potent, by the presence of 
the other sex. You will admit, after this free and fraternal confession, 
that I am a most peculiar being, one who is not worthy of the favor 
conferred upon him in acquaintanceship, being, unwittingly however, 
not appreciative of it. Considering the circumstances, you, I know, 
will not wonder at this, ascribing much to the poetical temperament, 
if I have any, and to the ebullitions of a person who is rapidly becoming 
aged and grey-haired. 

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever," Keats says in his "Endy- 
mion," and in juxtaposition to this we may say that a thing of horror 
is a horror forever; so must it have been to you in my persistent 
return to the conversation concerning — shall I say it — yes, though it 
may astonish you as much as a shock from a Leyden jar might — frogs; 
you will forgive me though the word be as a sounding cuff on the 
hearing of your ears. Yet, I am foolish, you must admit this, Miss 
Lillian, I am exceedingly foolish, if not fantastic, at times. "Dear 
me! what a world we live in," I hear you exclaim; but don't you 
believe it, for seriousness isn't often a part of myself. I may not be 
serious now, for all you know, but merely oscillating between two 

177 



Madison Cawein 

moods, sunshine and shadow, or fun and fear. You say you do not 
know how to take me, understand me? Well do not attribute any- 
thing I say, in any wise, to a philosophical mood, but to a poetical, 
that is to a mood of folly and senselessness. Now, I know we will 
understand each other perfectly, that is deo volente as Horace 
says, "God being willing." 

But to come to the gist of this my letter after so much circumlo- 
cution in getting at what I wanted to say at first, but was afraid to; — 
you have no idea what a timid and fearful insect I am; — could I see 
you Sunday evening to church if you desire to go and the weather is 
clear; anyway could I see you Sunday evening, no preengagement 
precluding the pleasure? That is what I wished to say all along, but 
couldn't somehow, and it is out now like a gasp, and I am relieved, 
and suppose you are too. Sincerely, Madison J. Cawein. 

1887, July 12. 

Miss Lillian Sweet: * * * j took a long ride last night, at 
about half past nine, along with a few gentlemen friends from the 
Newmarket out Third, to the House of Refuge, in an open barouche 
and enjoyed the air and the starlight hugely. They twitted me 
somewhat, merely in fun, "pennyworth of wit," on my publishing a 
book — making me gray and my not finding time in the rush of busi- 
ness to attend properly to the proof. I have a tendency already to 
grow gray, but do not think that publishing will promote that tendency, 
although mother, some nights ago, dreamed that I left home and after 
remaining away for some time, returned white-headed remarking that 
I had published my book. Amusing! 

The volume is now in the publishers' hands and I shall have it 
copyrighted today, and yours truly will by the first of November, 
perhaps, air his plumes as a knight of the pen before the public. If 
the work takes, it will be well; if it does not, I am content; for, as 
Aldrich says, I hold that "The sole reward of song is song." * * * 

1887, December 12. 

Miss Elvira Sydnor Miller: You were kind enough at one time — 
not so far back — to write me concerning some verses published in 
The Courier- Journal. You do not know how I appreciated the favor 
and the motive which influenced you. My poor verses won your 
commendation; kindly accept the volume [The Blooms of the Berry], 
1 mail you, in which, I hope, you may find much to please and more 
to make you remember one, who, if he has not as yet attained to 
anything that will wake a sympathetic chord in the breasts of human- 
ity, at least possesses that largeness of poetical aspiration, but not 
inspiration, which, if only fostered with proper encouragement, might 
attain to such, but lacking it — failed. Sincerely, Madison J. Cawein. 

178 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

1888, April 25. 

William Dean Howells: I did not dream when I sent you my 
volume of verses, together with the letter which served, as it were, 
as an introduction of myself — that it would meet with such a favorable 
reception. Although I have remained silent to your note, believe me, 
it was from no lack of a desire to thank you, but from an idea, mayhap 
false, of my own unworthiness. Do not think me unappreciative! 
On the contrary, it has been a comfort to me in that dearth of literary 
encouragement which a young author's first work — especially in the 
line of verse — must undergo. 

I do not know what made me forward you the volume ; unless it 
was my admiration for yourself, which impelled me to grope out, as 
it were, instinctively towards and after one whom I thought could 
and would understand me and my aspirations. Yet, to speak the 
truth, I confess that I did not expect to make more than a transient 
impression on you. 

Now, to infuse into my soul new zeal — that ichor of my inspira- 
tion — comes your most appreciative review in Harper's for May. I 
would love fondly to grasp your hand and thank you ; thank you for 
your generous encouragement, not with words, for I am sure I could 
not, but by that magnetic discourse which soul holds with soul, so 
that you would not only understand but should also feel my 
gratitude. Sincerely yours, Madison J. Cawein. 



1888, May 19. 

William Dean Howells: You will forgive me for inscribing this 
my second volume of verses [The Triumph of Music] to you, although 
it is but a poor way of showing my gratitude for the generosity 
extended by you to my first endeavor. For I can imagine how 
contemptible to an author must appear all that false flattery of 
sycophants (among whom, heaven be praised! I am not), who 
would be literary. 

My former volume was merely the ofifering of a school boy, 
written while yet attending High School and published after gradua- 
tion, written between the ages of nineteen and twenty-two. Almost 
any one can perceive in it its youthfulness, hence my non-publication 
of an introduction explaining; such being entirely uncalled for. For 
I thought, why should I explain the earliness of these poems? Merely 
that I may win unmerited praise if unpraiseworthy ! and avoid merited 
criticism as many do by printing a preface setting forth sedulously 
and painfully (to me I know) the precocity of their productions? 

The volume I now forward you, and which is dedicated to you 
and your genius, Mr. Howells, with the exception of the first poem, 

179 



Madison Cawein 

"The Triumph of Music," written at the age of nineteen or earlier, 
and which then consisted of from five to six hundred lines, — has been 
composed at odd moments, of nights and Sundays principally, when 
my position afforded me an opportunity of wooing the bashful 
Pieris. 

Working as I do — an assistant in a large betting establishment 
here in Louisville, in other words in a gambling house, you can 
imagine what encouragement in associates and surroundings is mine 
to the encouragement and inspiration of poesy. God! how I have 
longed for a change, and to this end have toiled, crushing down from 
eight A. M. to nine and ten P. M. sometimes, that aspiration which 
will struggle uppermost and will not let me be; but to give entire way 
to its caprice were to sink into want and perhaps into beggary; so I 
try to parcel my time between work and poetry, and you have here 
the result of my last Winter's work. Read it and see what there is 
in it, but always remember that he who wrote it, wrote it, as it 
were, in "between races" and on "off days." Yours sincerely, 
Madison J. Cawein. 



1888, June 16. 

Edmund Clarence Stedman: In the overabundance of poetry 
it was with trepidation that I forwarded you those two volumes which 
you — generously, contrary to all my anticipations — received so kindly. 
I allude to Blooms of the Berry and The Triumph of Music. You 
have been so kind! and I can do nothing to thank you but tell you I 
am thankful. 

You can see that I am very ambitious; and I fear that my aspira- 
tions are at best too lofty to attain that culminating success, which 
will make me a poet. For, despite the general tendency and concern 
of the present in the direction of prose, when there is not so much 
attention and less remuneration given to one who devotes his time 
to verse, I am determined to continue in the latter during my life. 

Do you think that in aspiration prayer is well, when the desire 
of the soul is like an insistent and persistent prayer? Yet, I have 
prayed and continue to pray for that influx of inspiration which God 
alone can grant. This may be a confession. I think trust and faith 
and prayer are well. I have tried to make my life such even this 
early in youth, for I am but 23 years of age and you see I have at 
least done something. 

Do not think me melancholy. I am not. On the other hand I 
am often, I fear, too buoyant, although subject at times to morbidness 
and melancholy of short duration, occasioned principally by my 
surroundings and my position which tends by the association of low 
instincts, ideals and passions to wear the poetry out of me and leave 

180 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

me nothing but despondency and weariness and that unutterable 
longing which only those who aspire know of. The clamorousness of 
nature and art with all their beauties calling out to me for attention 
and the interpretation of such cannot be easily unheard and set aside. 
I have hastily attempted somewhat, too much, perhaps, not in writing, 
I mean, but in publication; but you have said it is well, and for this 
encouragement let me thank you again; and if, as you say, there be 
anything in me that, with something to say, in time must sift upper- 
most haec olim meminisse juvabit. Most gratefully yours, Madison 
J. Cawein. 



1888, June 19. 

Miss Elvira Sydnor Miller: I think that you do yourself an 
injustice in not admiring your first volume of verse. Songs of the 
Heart, which I have read with not a slight degree of pleasure. How- 
ever, I suppose it is the same with all authors of rhymes, at least I 
have found it so. For often that first work of mine has become so 
distasteful to me that I have been again and again tempted to destroy 
the entire edition. Such moods were most frequent before the work 
had attracted any slight attention. I have discovered the unremun- 
erativeness of verse, yet, with that discovery, have determined — 
indeed, it were an impossibility to do otherwise, since poetry is as 
much a purpose as a passion with me, — to continue in verse during 
my life. A poet need not care an iota for recognition during his 
lifetime; he ought to be more than satisfied if that recognition is 
allotted to him after death, — that is, a true poet. 

I myself have entered upon a position in an occupation which 
is wholly alien to my nature and temperament; in fact, were it not 
for strongly exerted will power, a position that, through surroundings 
and influences would soon tend to annihilate all of the poetic in me, — 
simply to be able to publish my works by which I am certain to lose 
hundreds. No one will ever know, or could understand if known, 
the trying circumstances under which that last volume was brought 
forth. Yet it behooves all those who wish to rise above mediocrity, 
to aspire in the face of Fate and mount through work to that pinnacle 
of success which is granted to — how few! Sincerely, Madison J. 
Cawein. 



1888, June 21. 

John Fox, Jr.: Walking on Fourth Avenue yesterday morning 
I saw in the window of a certain studio the photograph of a painting 
that struck me as something embodying that idea of my ideal of 

181 



Madison C aw e i n 

which I have written, and of which I have, at times, also spoken to 
you. A beautiful female head crowned with a heavy tumultuousness 
of hair, reclining on perfect arms; such a face as one might endow an 
Oread with, wild and lovely, blending the immaculate elements of 
the spiritual with the virginal graces of the human. 

I purchased it; and it has usurped the place of honor, — heretofore 
occupied by that comely Virginia authoress, whose works I have 
admired — above my desk. I would not have mentioned this to you 
had I not had somewhat in mind: The association of the poetical 
conception with the artistic; poetry sans philosophy; that is, simply 
as a thing of loveliness, pleasing the senses the same as a beautiful 
painting; color in poetry as in art; that school of which Keats was 
the founder; of which Tennyson is the master; to which effect I have 
endeavored in all I have written. For I hold that, where in poetry 
we are compelled to dig and delve after the secret thought and subtle 
beauties, — such poetry approaches more the domain of the philo- 
sophical prose, and pleases the poetic palate less than that which, 
clothed with an exquisiteness of words, surprises the ear with unex- 
pected beauties and touches the soul with pathos. 

When I saw the picture it was as if I had created it myself, as an 
illustration of my idea of my "Lalage," or of what that creature, 
which sang the youth on to death in "The Triumph of Music," was; 
leaning forward, godly, immortal, beautifully triumphant, wondering 
"with cold commemorative eyes" if such was sleep or death; vaccil- 
lating between tears and smiles, hope and fear; a creature of air, a 
sylphide being of dreams, substantialized in thought. This leads 
me on to tell you that, in the tendency of illustration in the creation 
of the beautiful through words as built up in poetry, every poem I 
have written has its illustration or illustrations in my mind, distinct, 
separate as in a gallery. The Triumph of Music I have embodied in 
a hundred paintings too ungraspable for the brush, too indefinable 
for word-description. One simple, but pathetic sketch for "Pax 
Vobiscum" and one for each line of "In Mythic Seas," etc. 

Perhaps Dante had some such ideal conception of his Beatrice; 
Landor of his Aspasia in his "Pericles and Aspasia;" Spenser of his 
"Fairie Queene," ignoring the influence of Elizabeth; Swinburne of 
his Atalanta in "Atalanta in Calydon", with her cold, proud 
classic grace; Rossetti, of his Blessed Damosel; Tennyson, Enid, etc. 
I think it is only this influence of ideals that master the highest 
poetry; in such exists that divine afiflatus which it is useless to endeavor 
to acquire if not innate, the influence of which develops that ethereal 
fascination which elevates the soul in the perusal of verse. Yet, 
I have at times wished that this desire of song were not of me; for, 
truly, it is at times as much of a devil of hell as, at others, of an angel 
of heaven; intractable and compelling, irresistible and assuaging; 
but, I am determined — nay, rather bound — to accompany, to wor- 

182 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

ship this duality to the bitter end. That is the beauty which buoys 
up a true devotee of song — the inabihty to abandon its cruelty or 
its kindness. 

My regards and remembrances of friendship to my very dear 
friends, your brother and Mr. Allen. Always believe me, sincerely, 
Madison J. Cawein. 

1888, September 12. 

John Fox, Jr.: Your ardor anticipates your anticipation, for I 
see by your last letter that you are expecting me Sunday or Monday 
[at Red Ash, Whitley County, Kentucky]. This is how I am situated. 
The Louisville Races commence Tuesday the eighteenth, and according 
to contract our pool-room closes promptly at noon. This allows me the 
remainder of the day to myself, and I have so managed with my 
brother John, that he has permitted me one week of unadulterated 
leisure, which you know how I desire to utilize. I shall leave Tuesday 
the eighteenth by the morning train and arrive — well you know when. 
I wish to see some of Kentucky and that is why I prefer the day for 
traveling. I am thrilled to start. Your very letters seem to bring 
me a snufT of the mountain winds * * * j ggg^n to be there with 
you already. My loins girded for the storming of enormous heights, 
a pilgrimage up, up, through bars and belts of mist to frowning bluffs 
and ardent cliffs. * * * However, until I grasp your and your 
brother's hand I must say farewell. * * * 

1888, October 32. [November i.] 

John Fox, Jr.: [Mr. Cawein was Mr. Fox's guest for one week. 
The following is from his second letter after the visit.] I can imagine 
how mournful and lonely the mountains are now. I can imagine 
the gloomy melancholy stamped on their Indian visages; the sadness 
of their weighty syllables when the wind moves them with gladless 
conversation. I suppose all those many torrents with which we, in 
our rambles, became familiar, and which we made the highways of 
our pilgrimages to those exalted shrines of worship — those castled 
rocks — have become murmurers of water that stammer and scramble 
through damning leaves and choking weeds. 

I have been over on the Indiana Knobs every available Sunday 
and so have had an opportunity to study recondite nature in its most 
mournful and delight-instilling beauty. * * * 

1888, November 28. 

John Fox, Jr.: I am utterly thoughtless at present; having 
drained my brain as dry as hay, naturally I have to doze and wait 
for the rains of imagination to sodden this again ere I dare to subject 
it to another process of compression and drain. 

183 



Madison Cawein 

I have finished my prospective volume of verse [Accolon of Gaul] — 
that is not finished it exactly, but have completed it to that perfec- 
tion which my precocious mind fancies finished. To speak plainer — 
I have done all at my present age [twenty-three years], that I can 
hope to do, or ought to hope to do, with thfe subjects handled. The 
MS. is now ready and at any time I am so disposed I may place it in 
the hands of a publisher. So I hestitate. No one knows its defects as 
well as I know them; no one could remedy them better than myself, 
but, to confess, this is beyond my intellectual ability. It stands as it 
stands. If it is good it is good ; if it is bad it is still good. I have worked 
very hard and have done my best; I have no fault to find with my- 
self. Art for art's sake. Art is its own reward, say I. I am also utterly 
worn and tired out, and want to rest — to rest for at least a time — to 
read as a relaxation to my labor. * * * 

How is our realistic romance progressing — almost ready for the 
publisher, I expect? John, why not put something into it that skips 
the Ten Commandments, eh? Your friend, sincerely, M. J. Cawein. 



1888, December 14. 

John Fox, Jr.: * * * This for you: The only way an author 
can keep those blue devils from devouring him is by fighting them — 
by fighting I mean hoping and working. You are not naturally of 
a lymphatic temperament, are you? Then hang it!— Why don't you 
hope? Put faith in your effort, and in faith you will certainly find 
consolation, hence energy and ambition. If you have no faith in 
your work now, work on it and infuse it with your own unquenchable 
ego and so develop faith and then tandem victoriam. 

Sometimes I think I am too hopeful. My sanguine disposition 
humps itself too often to do and dare too much. And do you know 
that often I can hardly believe a moiety of the good that those emi- 
nent critics have said about my poetry, — for, if so, why are my 
manuscripts still returned from the magazines? I am led to believe 
myself a scribbler far overrated and praised. * * * 



1889, May 15. 

Frederick W. Cawein: Stick to your ideals through thick and 
through thin and if — as all of us poor worldlings are compelled to do 
— you have to slave for a little pelf, why the mere subdued pursuit 
of something above the minds of ordinary humanity makes one super- 
ior to them, and the lowly mind is always humble and conceding to 
the soul that has aspirations. Again, you know the mere creation of 
the beautiful, totally regardless of all remuneration, recompense or 

184 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

reward, is sufficient reward to the acolyte. Enough! you know all 
this or ought to. The material is always more egotistical than the 
spiritual and is always presuming with the ideal which it tends to 
drag down and soil in the quagmire of necessity. The races are here 
and I hardly have time to think of, much less write of, things that 
I should like to write and think about, and even while I am writing 
here I am interrupted again and again. How is the landscape about 
your new abode [Indianapolis]? Artistic, dreamy, pastoral, idyllic? 
I cannot write a line more now, the importunities of the "betters" 
are increasing. Sincerely your cousin, M. J. Cawein. 

1889, May 21. 

Edmund Clarence Stedman: My last poetical venture, which 
you so kindly spoke of in your letter, had already met with so much 
caustic criticism, on the part of the critics from Boston to San Fran- 
cisco, that I despaired of hearing anything at all, and especially of 
anything good of the work, on the part of the foremost critic. 

Let me thank you for your letter which has alleviated, somewhat, 
these tribulations and that disgust for my art which, naturally, 
accrued to me through the conflicting reception of this last publica- 
tion — also has turned the damper put upon my spirit and given flue 
to a renewed energy. If I was aware of the mistake I was making by 
publishing Accolon of Gaul before publishing it, I proceeded in an 
uncertain hope and a dogged determination either of succeeding or 
failing utterly: in that spirit of sed quid temptare nocebit? and have 
done neither one nor the other. 

I, however, still possess youth, which is something; though there 
is time yet — much time to turn my pencil in the direction you suggest 
— the American field. Your friend, Mr. Howells, who has, as you 
say, bestowed upon me the accolade of literary knighthood, has been, 
perhaps, too kind and considerate of me as well as you have been. 
When I was laboring obscurely at verse making, with alternate fits 
of feverish hope and despair, I often envied those who were so fortu- 
nate as to possess such literary advisers and experienced friends as 
you and Mr. Howells are, and had any one foretold that, in time, I 
should claim you as such, I am certain I should have smiled at it as 
at a chimera; but, behold the whirligig of time has actually brought 
in its revenges and in my confusion I can only repay you with thanks. 
Most sincerely, M. J. Cawein. 

1889, August 23. 

Frederick W. Cawein: Your letter was most interesting from 
the fact, that you had something interesting to me to write about; 
I mean Whitcomb Riley whose acquaintance I really do envy you. 

185 



Madison C aw e i n 

When you happen to see him again tell him that I am one of his 
greatest admirers and a new volume from his happy pen is always a 
treat to me. * * * You must try to get in with such persons as 
Riley, if possible, Fred, and it is possible for you. * * * j know 
you will make something out of yourself, because you have that 
energy and settled seriousness of purpose which that Power who gave 
will not suffer to go unrewarded. You must, if you will it, compel 
attention. And when you are worthy of recognition, as surely as the 
stars are eternal, you will get it. You are a great deal [two years] 
younger than I am, and through application towards a fixed point 
which [in your case] is art, who shall say that you may not even be 
higher than I am when you have attained the age of twenty-four. 
||i& I make frequent trips to our old haunts among the Indiana hills 
and always miss you. * * * xhe season of racing is in full 
swing East and West and consequently I have to suffer. * * * 

1889, September 16. 

John Fox, Jr. : * * * I have made the acquaintance of Young 
E. Allison lately, he whose story, as you are probably aware, is to 
ovature, through an early number of the Century ["The Longworth 
Mystery," Century Magazine, October, 1889], the gestic ability of 
another Kentucky champion's pen in the difficult list of modern 
literature, and I found him most interesting — particularly his conver- 
sation, which has a flavor entirely its own, and the ability of its wit 
is remarkably sparkling. 

My friend, Miss Elvira S. Miller, has been quarreling with the 
Muse lately, and, in revenge, sits vis-a-vis to Prose who is whis- 
pering fairy tales in her ears. She intends to bring out through 
a Louisville publisher a book, I think called "Fairy Tales For Chil- 
dren" [''The Tiger's Daughter and Other Stories,'' 1889], somewhere 
about the holidays. * * * 

As for yourself — what? As for myself — you know that my art 
is always aching in me and that I must work and not permit it to 
starve. It is my life. If the public escapes from the infliction of 
another volume of lyrics by Madison JelTerson (as the New York 
Sun is pleased to style me) Cawein next year I shall want to know 
why. * * * 

1889, October 21. 

John Fox, Jr.: * * * You could not have rendered me a 
greater favor than you did in bringing Wilson [Robert Burns Wilson] 
around. You should have prepared me beforehand; naturally I was 
a little embarrassed and perhaps showed it. I was more than charmed 

186 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

with him. I like him very much. He is nobly made — physically as 
well as mentally; morally — I know nothing of him; however, if one 
be permitted to gauge that by what he has written, in that respect 
also he must be irreproachable. He more than satisfied my mental 
photograph of him. I had pictured him as somewhat older looking 
and found, on comparison, he was just the opposite. So sorry that 
you did not bring him around a little earlier. I can hardly forgive 
either of you for leaving as abruptly as you did. * * * 

1889, December 7. 

John Fox, Jr. : * * * I suppose you have read Miss Higbee's 
[Mrs. Hester Higbee Geppert] story, "In God's Country," in the 
November Belford's Monthly Magazine, as every one seems to have 
read it. However, if you have not, procure the magazine at any price 
and peruse, and you will be amply repaid. The story is simply yet 
powerfully told, and is artistic. This novelette is simply beautiful. 
* * * Although a personal acquaintance of Miss Higbee I had 
never given her credit for so much talent. * * * You ought to 
know Miss Higbee and Miss Elvira Miller. * * * 

1889, December 23. 

Frederick W. Cawein: * * * Art and literature are about 
at a standatill at present in Louisville; just the same old sing-song 
hocus-pocus it was at the time you left for Indianapolis. You are 
actually well out of it. A prophet is never appreciated in his own 
country; he has to gain admiration elsewhere before his own people 
acknowledge him. Really, I think you have improved wonderfully 
in your drawing. That little pen sketch of your room is excellent, 
and I do think that that room would not only make a studio, in all the 
artistic meaning of the word, but I do imagine that a poet might be 
able to dream wonderful dreams in it. I suppose you prevaricated 
somewhat on the decorations, etc. of the chamber, but at the same 
time hope that it really is as you pictured it. 

All that is necessary to success, you know, is energy, hope and 
health, and with these three friends there is nothing that cannot be 
accomplished with time. I hope you have them. I enclose a V bill; 
it is a Christmas gift to you from me. Do not hestitate to accept 
it, and do not attempt to retaliate. I can afford it, you can not. 
Some day it may be vice versa. * * * 

1890, February 10. 

John Fox, Jr.: I have been suffering from rheumatism in my 
hand, hence my delay in answering yours of two weeks past. * * * 
I should indeed like to be with you where you are [Big Stone Gap] 

187 



Madison C aw e in 

but you know how I am situated. As it is at present, I shall not be 
able, even if you should discover some good investment, to invest. 
You will readily understand why. The publication of my present 
volume [Lyrics and Idyls] will require a great part of my bank account. 
You know already that it is only for this that I am a slave. Such 
is my passion — it would be impossible to philosophize one contrary 
wise. I am doomed or fated to it; it is more of a curse than a blessing 
— this fever of ambition! It was well for Cardinal Wolsey to charge 
and exhort Cromwell "to fling away ambition." — Could Wolsey have 
flung it away so easily previous to his fall as he admonished his friend 
to do after his fall? "By that sin fell the angels!" What of man then, 
crawling between heaven and earth? * * * 



1890, March 12. 

Frederick W. Cawein: * * * j gh^ll mail you a copy of 
Lyrics and Idyls as soon as it is out — that is if you wish one. I think it 
will be out this week. I do not want to compel you to read poetry, 
for, as you know yourself, the age is most unpoetical ; in fact, according 
to many English and American wiseacres, the Age of Poetry is past 
or rapidly passing, and that of sophistry and science about to usurp 
it. Alas! and woe are we! whenever the world comes to such a 
pass! Poetry is the balm of life. Without it all artistic temperaments 
are what? What, art? What, music? What, love? The most 
beautiful being that we have they would exile from the earth, and 
erect in her place an image of subtlety, scorn, cynicism and pedantry! 
What a defilement of the flower-strewn temple, the incense-breathing 
altar of the goddess of youth! What a profanation of our rose-bound 
divinity of light, truth and purity! Well, if it is to be so — so be it! 
But may I be dead, buried and forgotten when it is so! * * * 



1890, March 19. 

John Fox, Jr. : You talk about me being a gentleman of "infinite 
leisure" as compared with yourself at present! You are wrong, my 
dear John. For the last three weeks and more I have been a slave 
of infinite toil, and am suffering at present from the effects — neuralgia 
in my face — which is very painful. My brother John was taken 
down sick in February and it is only now that he is able to do his 
work. During the time that he was in bed all the work of this office, 
which is no small amount, devolved upon yours humbly. 

I have not written a thing for upwards of three months and do 
not intend to, until I feel capable of doing anything I may be moved 
to write on, at full and free justice. That acceptance of your story 

188 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

["A Mountain Europa" accepted by The Century Magazine, but not 
published until fall 1892] should have certainly inspired you with 
the fiery energy of a new endeavor. I know how I should have felt, 
and how I should have worked in the exultation of knowing that my 
first piece of work had proved available to and had been accepted by 
one of the foremost magazines in the United States. * * * 



1890, March 25. 

Frederick W. Cawein: I was very much gratified to hear that 
my last work pleased you. * * * The poem that you especially 
mention, "Among the Knobs," is commemorative of one of those many 
delightful trips we used to take among the Indiana hills, and I suppose 
you did not fail to recognize the locality which I have attempted to 
describe. Charlie [his brother. Dr. Charles L.] and I visit the place 
frequently and always find something new to admire or to bring away 
— flowers or fancies. * * * You are denied the broadening 
influence of the hills, the valleys and the woods, where you are now; 
for, if I understand you correctly, there are no such appealing beauties 
of nature in the vicinity of Indianapolis. Will [his brother William] 
is doing some very fine work in the way of water coloring. It is aston- 
ishing how much good one can get out of one's self when one is forced 
to apply one's self. He has not done any work in this way for 
years. * * * 



1890, March 31. 

John Fox, Jr. : In the first place you must know that everything 
is all right and all are safe at my house. The newspaper reports 
might lead you to believe otherwise. The tornado [in Louisville, 
March 27,] was horrible and the effects terrible. 

I send you by mail today my last volume of verse — my last, may 
be, for some years. As I am disposed at present, it seems to me as 
if I shall never write another line. Why! Not because I am dis- 
couraged in any way, and not because I am satisfied with what 
I have done. It is because I am never satisfied with that which I 
have done; that my hope is not sufficient to my desire; my ambition 
overleaps itself. In other words, try how I will, work how I may, 
I shall never be able to attain to the eminence of those ideals which 
are ever illusory, not at my present age. Although I feel that I 
have not done sufficient serious work in poetry for one of my age, 
I feel again that I should cease writing for a while and permit my 
brain and nerve fibres to adjust themselves to a new endeavor. Many 
a man with less expenditure of energy and endeavor, not to speak of 

189 



Madison C aw e in 

vitality, with equal ambition, has made himself famous at twenty- 
five. I have not even made reputation enough after seven years or 
more of toil and hope, to get one of my poems into a third class maga- 
zine, not to speak of a second or a first class. Yet I believe this 
work. Lyrics and Idyls, is my best book. You might read it care- 
fully and let me know if you agree with me. 

If you can, try to call on Mr. Howells. I know that he would 
be pleased to meet you and that you would be delighted with him. 
He is about the only friend that I have there. He is my literary 
lather. 

Let me hear from you as soon as convenient. I shall await a 
reply with impatience. Always sincerely, M. J. Cawein. 



1890, July 18. 

John Fox, Jr.: If you have not yet been introduced to Rudyard 
Kipling as India, England and America, the last partially only, have, 
permit me to make you acquainted What do you think of a young 
Englishman raised in India being able to produce a work like these 
"Forty Tales?" A young man of twenty-four only, whose fame has 
been rapid in its rise, and from his work, I should say is liable to remain 
fixed, and most probably placed higher. Perhaps you have read the 
poem of "Yussuff" in Macmillans or reprinted in the dailies; 
poems with a wealth of barbaric coloring and orientally dramatic 
to a degree — a great degree — well, that individual also is this twenty- 
four-year old Kipling. 

Directly after you left Louisville — or probably a week after you 
left — J. W. Riley was here as the guest of Young E. Allison. I had 
the pleasure of meeting him, through the kindness of Mr. Sherley, at 
a dinner given in his honor at the Sherley Place. Riley is an original 
and I like him immensely. He, too, is carried away with this young 
Englishman from the land of the Brahmin and the faquir. 

Has the heat suppressed you or are you writing another novel- 
ette? As ever, sincerely, M. J. Cawein. 

[A facsimile of this letter appears on pages 192 and 193.] 



1890, July 26. 

William Dean Howells: The "Study" of the August Harper's 
has interested me more than usual this month. Heretofore, I do not 
hesitate to say, the newspaper and other reviews have worried me 
not a little, but with time have gradually grown hardened to them. 
I often wonder why certain papers seem especially hostile to works 
of mine; and why they incessantly persist in lugging your name (as 

190 



A Posthumous Autobio graphy 

a kind of indulgent et praesidiiim et duke decus meum individual), 
insulting you and me at the same time — with a notice of a volume, 
which you had not even dreamed existed, much less seen; all this 
because you were audacious enough to speak well of some previous 
book of mine. Thanks to the kindness of the "Study" I now under- 
stand. The pleasure to them, it appears, lies in the bald fact that 
not being able to control and dominate the ideas and the true literary 
acumen of a far higher authority, they still possess the power to 
disagree openly with that authority, making that difference public 
and of weight through the columns of some large city daily. 

Enough! — I have been enjoying your last two volumes, A 
Hazard of New Fortune, and The Shadow of a Dream, very much — 
very much. Especially the latter appealed to and impressed me; 
containing, as it does, happy flights of poetry beyond me; pastel 
paintings in delicate prose far more vibrant with moral beauties and 
sensitive to a degree with color than much of the highly praised 
modern poetry. Your touch is felicitous and pregnant with exquisite 
pathos in such a description as that of the neglected garden by the 
sea; then again dramatic to suspense, anxious suspense and fear, in 
such a death scene as you make it the tragic stage of. I do not 
know of any one of your later books which does not portray this 
same peculiar poetry expressed in your own masterful way, and 
preaching and teaching at the same time something better. Most 
sincerely yours, M. J. Cawein. 

1890, September 9. 

William Dean Howells: I will take the liberty of seeing you 
within the next week or so, perhaps — that is, if I am so fortunate as 
to find your residence. I have desired so much to meet and to know 
you better; and, if nothing prevents shall start on the fifteenth or the 
sixteenth of September for Boston, as I presume you reside there. 
My journey, of course, owing to business matters here — must be very 
brief; and should I not meet you I shall be more than disappointed 
and have to regard my trip accordingly of no use. Believe me, 
ever sincerely yours, Madison J. Cawein. 

1890, September id. 

Miss Mary E. Cardwill : Your more than interesting letter to hand. 
I regret that I shall not be able to see you personally soon, as I intend 
starting Monday or Tuesday on a short trip to Boston and New 
York. In the meanwhile I opine your article [on me now being written 
for the Indianapolis News] will be completed and perhaps published. 
[Continued on page 194.] 

191 



Madison C awe in 



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192 



A Posthumous Autobiography 



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193 



Madison C aw e in 

As to myself there is very little to be told. I was born at Louis- 
ville on the 23rd of March, 1865, making my present age just twenty- 
five. After a course in the public schools of Louisville — which 
course was not noted for its precociousness — the High School re- 
ceived me with open arms. This was in 188 1. I graduated therefrom 
in 1886, without honors, but with the useless degree of A. B. I 
wrote a great deal while attending High School and a year thereafter 
published Blooms of the Berry. The notices were few, the sales of the 
book, less: * * * j ^^^ j^^^ engaged on a book, or single long 
poem, I don't know which, as it is kind o' producing itself. This, 
I think, I shall call Days and Dreams. It consists of many lyrics — 
a lyrical romance, as it were — centering around only two characters, 
a male and a female. I don't know when I'll complete it; don't 
know whether or when I'll publish it. * * * 



1890, September 22, Boston. 

Miss Elvira Sydnor Miller: Well, here I am in the big East, the 
petted and pampered favorite of Mr. Howells and his vis-a-vis. I 
spent a day and a night and a half a day with the Howells last week 
at the beautiful sea-side resort at which they are stopping — namely 
the Prescott House. From the veranda of this hotel the ocean 
stretches its deep cerulean welter uninterruptedly to Spain and Ireland. 
Oh, the changing colors of its moods and vessels — sloops and mackerel 
boats — that shift and shine their snowy sails in the tenuous light of 
an autumn sun. Yesterday was Sunday; John Fox and I again 
visited the Howells at the Prescott, and staying over to tea with 
them, beheld that "light that never was on land or sea" by star light 
and by moon beam; for the waters seemed to be envious of the bril- 
liancy of the skies and each seemed to be trying to outdo the other 
in being beautiful. The full tide sparkled and flickered with phos- 
phorescence as it thundered mellowly against the dripping breakwaters 
of the beach, and the sails of the far off boats glided like so many 
phantom barques along the pure purple of the horizon. Egg Rock 
raised an amorphous mass far out crowned with the glowing ruby of 
its light house. 

The Howells have treated me royally. They have overwhelmed 
me with favors and cards and letters of introduction to the most 
famous literary men, such as Lowell, Alden, Gilder, etc. The after- 
noon of my arrival at the beach as their guest they took me driving 
over to Little Nahant. Here be the swell summer residences of the 
Nabobs of Boston, select and seclusive and beautiful beyond 
description. For hours we watched the surf singing inward and 
feathering like the blown white hair of so many racing Tritons on 
to the sand; for an hour we marked the rocks spouting their foam, 

194 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

the fishermen's nets crusted with barnacles, the showering sun 
beams, the Hghts that shifted as the mood of the ocean changed, 
the boats that beat inward and the sails that gleamed outward. 
Then we passed Longfellow's summer home, and so home to sit on 
the veranda to talk on things that are or are not; things that were 
and things to be. 

I leave for New York tomorrow afternoon. I am being spoiled 
up here; I must get home before my head is turned. Very sincerely 
yours, M. J. Cawein. 

1891, October 16. 

Edmund Clarence Stedman: One line from you is encourage- 
ment. Thank you for the score of encouragements breathed in the 
twenty lines of your charming note. How unfortunate that I did not 
know you were at home when I was East! I have just returned from 
Boston where I saw Mr. and Mrs. Howells. Prior to that trip I was in 
New York for five days. During my stay there I met your staunch 
friend, Frank D. Sherman, and during the time of my call you were 
an important factor in the conversation. I desired so much to meet 
you and to thank you for your early encouragement. I was under 
the impression, however, that you were still away from the city — 
rusticating in the mountains or by the sea shore. 

When I am in the East again I shall not fail to grasp your hand 
and hear your voice. Most sincerely yours, Madison Cawein. 

1892, May 21. 

Mary E. Cardwill: * * * j ^^s in Florida for over a month 
(March) and have been very much occupied since my return. I 
have not been well for some time, but as soon as I feel better I intend 
dropping over to see you — perhaps next week. * * * 

1892, November 5. 

Edmund Clarence Stedman: You have made me very happy 
with your new book [The Nature and Elements of Poetry]. Although 
I had great pleasure in reading the lectures as they were published 
in the Century, my pleasure is greater now that I have the book from 
you personally, and I am already deep into it again. 

After reading your first lecture last night, I turned to the fly-leaf 
on which you have written the presentation line to me. I assure 
you that I appreciate above everything else the one word that you 
have written there concerning myself. If I am really and truly a 
Poet, as you say there, there is no other God-given gift that I have 

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Madison C aw e in 

so longed for or striven for as this which is pre-eminent. I thank 
you a hundred times for your kindnesses, not only present, but past, 
and these are also present with the present. 

I had hoped to see more of you when I was in New York, but 
the Fates adjusted otherwise for me. Some day I, too, may take up 
my abode in the great city and then shall we not know each other 
better? Yes. 

I shall have a new book of poems out next year, which I know 
will justify much that my best critics have been led to hope for by 
my early books. I, too, have said many times that with me "poetry 
is not so much a purpose as a passion." This will make my sixth 
volume in seven years — you perceive how the passion holds me — like 
a vice. Very gratefully and sincerely yours, Madison Cawein 

1893, Julys. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: [Mr. Cawein's first letter to Mr. Gibson.] 
Permit me to thank you for the "ponderous folio of rhyme" which 
you were so kind as to send me. I have enjoyed the fourteen sonnets 
more than I can tell you. Indeed, if you care anything for my opinion, 
I should like to tell you that there are few, or none, better, so far as 
I have observed, published from year to year in the current magazines 
by poets of established reputation. Usually I have no patience with 
the sonnet, being too artificial a form for me, and I am always im- 
patient of control in respect to writing poetry. However, I have 
enjoyed yours and have read them over two or three times. "Life," 
"Fate" and "Night" are finely conceived and flawlessly finished. 
In every one, however, there is the true ring of the golden metal. 
Accept my congratulations and thanks, and believe me, very sincerely 
yours, Madison J. Cawein 

1894, March 17. 

Walter Malone: * * * What are you doing with yourself 
these hard times? Interspersing your law practice [in Memphis] with 
poetry or vice versa? You can talk about your professions or busi- 
nesses, but literature — especially poetry — is Viarder than the entire 
combination, and more unsatisfactory in its results, both ideally and 
practically. I get more discouraged every day. Try as you will, 
dream, drink or go to the devil the end is one and the same — nothing 
for your pains or your pleasure. The world is teeming with talent, 
prose and poetical — and especially the latter, — that is just naturally 
begging to be heard, and to be loved; that offers its productions at a 
sacrifice and more than frequently, at nothing, in order to be heard, 
and yet be refused by publishers as well as magazine editors, I 

196 



A Posthumous Autobio graphy 

think there is no other field more crowded with excellent talent than 
the modern field of literature. Genius alone is lacking. Genius, that 
only could make itself heard above this many mouthed Blatant Beast 
of literature; and, alas! and woe is me! that genius is not mine! To 
wake up some fine morning and find myself to be famous, or, the next 
best thing, to feel that I deserved to be famous, in the knowledge 
that I have produced something that will live in spite of the critics 
and the vituperations of reviewers. Enough ! * * * As ever your 
sincere friend, Madison J. Cawein. 

1894, April 4. 

Walter Malone: Tell me: shall I have several of my books sent 
to the Memphis Authors' Club of which I am now an honorary mem- 
ber? — or what can I do to show that I appreciate the honor they have 
seen fit to bestow upon me? 

My dear Walter, you know how much I should like to be with 
you when Riley is in Memphis! but things arrange themselves so 
that I shall be kept very busy during the ensuing two months or 
more, not literarily — but in the way of business. Some money I 
have falling due, several thousands, which I see a way of investing 
advantageously [in Kentucky lands] will absolutely demand my 
presence here as well as my closest attention. * * * j should like 
to be in Memphis not because Riley will be there as your guest, but 
for the great pleasure of again seeing you and grasping your hand and 
thanking you for your interest in me and my work. * * * 

1894, August 20. 

John Fox, Jr. : * * * Have not been doing anything except 
correcting proofs, etc. for the past month or so, and having a good 
time with the girls, with one especially. They will, I hope, in time 
supersede my poetical aspirations which have been and will, perhaps, 
continue to be a curse to me. I have not absolutely written anything 
for nearly six months now. 

Let me congratulate you on your last story in The Century ["A 
Cumberland Vendetta"]. It is great. Your fame and position in letters 
are assured. You have no pricks to kick against now, my boy. * * * 

1894, September 27. 

Walter Malone: Thank you very much for the volume of 
Timrod. I had given up in despair of ever procuring a copy of 
that fiery singer of inspired battle lyrics, sonnets and songs. How 
he does stir the blood in you and make you yearn, vainly indeed and 
alas! that you might have been one in the Lost Cause. I searched 

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Madison C aw e in 

every book store and was unable to even discover a bookseller who 
knew of him. At last I ordered a copy from New York, but was 
informed that the book was no longer to be obtained. Imagine my 
chagrin! A thousand thanks for the volume. I have read, it from the 
memoir to the last poem. I can not thank you enough. * * * 

1895, January ii. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Let me thank you for the kind 
words you had to say about my last book, Intimations of the Beautiful. 
* * * A letter like that one of yours helps one much; as much, 
almost, as a critically favorable notice appearing in one of the first 
magazines by some distinguished author and critic. * * * 

1895, May 30. 

Harrison S. Morris: * * * j thj^]^ that, at your kind sug- 
gestion, I shall run up to Philadelphia in October and see you if it is 
only for a week or so. I am sure it will do me good in many ways, 
especially in a literary way, and I need it badly that way, God knows! 
There is so little encouragement to literary endeavor here at home. 
So few people read poetry or verse now, that it looks like time wasted 
to apply yourself to its creation. I don't know but what it is the same 
the world over. Only the poets of the present day, more or less, read 
each other. Very few outsiders interest themselves, and if such do, 
it is not frequently that they do so understandingly. * * * 

1896, March 30. 

R. E. Lee Gibson ; * * * You flatter me very much in naming 
your first baby after me [Mary Elaine Cawein Gibson ]. A sweet 
little girl, too! I should have liked very much to have seen her before 
I attempted a poem in her honor. However, I have attempted one, 
feeling sure that all I could say in it could not be otherwise than true 
of her; but it might have been said better had I had an opportunity of 
seeing my little namesake before penning the enclosed ["Baby 
Mary"]. * * * 

1896, May 16. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * It is such appreciation as yours 
[in which Undertones is praised] that encourages me to keep on writing 
and helps me to do better and better. * * * j fggj ^-j^^^ what you 
said comes fresh and sweet and satisfying from the well-spring of 
your heart of hearts, * * * 

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A Posthumous Autobiography 

1896, June 3. 

Harrison S. Morris: I am just in receipt of your beautiful poem, 
"Ad Matrem" [later published in Lyrics and Landscapes] for which 
I wish to thank you. There are lines in it which in beauty, faith, 
sorrow and hope, surpass anything I have recently read in English 
elegiac poetry. Stanzas iii and iv and vii strike me as being 
particularly fine in thought, expression and metaphor. All in 
all it is a poem of deep feeling and love, and a worthy and imper- 
ishable monument to the memory of her [mother of Mr. Morris] 
who was "laughter-loving, true" and "wise," "in nature's shy 
humanities." * * * 

1896, September 28. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I have been away a great deal this summer, 
both to the country and to different cities. Indianapolis was one of 
these, and I spent a pleasant day or two with James Whitcomb Riley 
there, and he spoke of you and your work very flatteringly. He 
writes me that his new book, A Child World — much of which he read 
to me in MS. when I was with him — was grinding in the press and 
would probably be out early next month. It is a beautiful poem 
and worthy of the author of Afterwhiles. * * * 

1896, October 29. 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich: * * * Here in the South, if I do 
say so, there is very little encouragement extended to the writer; 
especially the writer of verse. We have to look to the East both for 
the appreciation and the pecuniary reward, which act as a stimulant 
to renewed effort; the former is usually a long time coming, the latter, 
in my experience, never does arrive. So, you will perceive, my labor 
is one of love and love alone. Therefore I hope that working thus 
unselfishly I may in time be able to accomplish something really 
excellent in poetry. Such praise and such criticism as you were kind 
enough to give my work, coming as they do from you, I need hardly 
say tend to smooth some of the roughness of my road to Parnassus. 
Permit me to thank you again for your praise and your criticism. 

1897, January 2. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j h^ve received personal letters 
from many eminent writers regarding my last book: Thomas Bailey 
Aldrich, our most polished poet, Edmund Gosse, the English critic 

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Madison C aw e in 

and poet, Charles Dudley Warner, Hamilton W. Mabie, and Mrs. 
Louise C. Moulton, all writers of great ability and critics of much 
acumen, have written me the kindest words of praise about The Garden 
of Dreams. But none of them touched me half so much as your 
good letter did. I cannot tell you how much I prize it. You are 
continually heaping favors upon me, and I have none to reply with. 
I hope some day that you will give me an opportunity of responding 
in kind. * * * 



1897, January 17. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Ever since the beginning of December I have 
been suffering from rheumatism in my shoulders and arms, wrists 
and hands which made it difficult, often impossible for me to write. 
I am some better today and thought I would take advantage of my 
present good condition to answer a number of letters that I should 
have answered some time ago. * * * j ^ould advise you to send 
your poem ["The Healer"] — if you have not done so already — to some 
magazine, say Harper s. It is a lovely poem. * * * \Vhy should 
not you try, and succeed as many unworthier ones have. If these 
poems are returned to you that signifies nothing. I have many of 
mine returned to me every year. You stand a chance of having one 
or two accepted, and every little helps, you know. * * * 

1897, July 18. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: On the 8th I left for the country where I 
have been idling ever since. I am now at home where I hope to see 
you when you visit Louisville on the 24th. You anticipate too much, 
your estimates of my poor abilities is entirely too high. I fear that 
you will not realize one tenth of what you expect in me personally. 
However, I am sure that we shall always be good friends. * * * 

1897, September 14. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j have been working in a heavy- 
hearted sort of a way for the past month or so. You will ask me 
why, perhaps, and I shall tell you. You remember the love affair 
I told you about, and the letter which I wrote to her [a Louisville 
girl] advising her to marry the young man [living in the East] who 
had proposed to her. Though I was greatly pleased at such devotion 
as hers, I saw readily what was best for her. Two weeks after I last 
saw you [Mr. Gibson's first visit to Cawein, July, 1897] I received 
a formal note that she was married. I had cared much for her before 

200 



A Posthumous Autobio graphy 

this, but after the irrevocable step was taken and she was lost to me, 
I cannot describe to you what I have endured, and endure in silence 
and without flinching. Hell has no greater torment, to my belief. I 
think I have done what was best for both of us. I may have done 
wrong in advising her as I did and compelling myself to give her up; 
but I think that I have done right. As it is, I am seeking consolation 
among my books and my other young lady friends, of whom I have 
many that are very charming. And at the present writing I find that 
my burden of woe is considerably lightened. I am starting for the 
Tennessee Exposition tomorrow, and am taking my mother and sister 
along with me. * * * 

1897, December 3. 

James Whitcomb Riley: I was about writing to you [their cor- 
respondence began in 1891] about your Rubaiyat, — having just finished 
reading it in the December number of The Century, — when your most 
beautiful book arrived. I treated myself to a re-reading of your fine 
poem in its exquisite dress, and now write you accordingly. * * * 

In every way the book is one of the loveliest I have ever had the 
pleasure of handling or of owning. Outside and inside, from the 
delightful dedicatory stanzas, to "Tamain," from front to back, and 
then from back to front, it is perfect with the perfectness of per- 
fection. The poem is characteristic of your best. It is in your 
happiest vein, and even without the beautiful raiment and adorn- 
ments which your publishers have given to it, would have been sure 
of great success. As it is, in its sumptuous array, heaven knows how 
many editions you are doomed to exhaust. 

My dear Riley, you don't know how proud it makes me feel, 
as if your success were my success, too, — to see how steadily you go 
on advancing and advancing, head and shoulders above them all. 
* * * You are our greatest poet now, and I do not see one 
withering bay-leaf in the green laurel which is so justly yours. Long 
may it continue to you, and you to us, is the wish of, Your grateful 
and admiring friend, Madison J. Cawein. 

1897, December 3. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I am sending you herewith a copy of The 
Triumph of Music, one of my earliest books, which I do not think 
you possess. It will amuse you, perhaps shock you, in parts, to see 
how imitative of Swinburne I was ten years ago, and what wicked 
thoughts I must have had. The greater part of this little book is 
contained, revised and re-written, in my Moods and Memories. You 
may be anxious to compare the originals with the re-prints. * * * 

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Madison C aw e in 



1897, December 7. 



R. E. Lee Gibson: Your beautiful gift arrived yesterday and I 
don't know how to begin to thank you for the volume of Tennyson' s 
Memoirs. It is a work I have been most desirous of having, but did 
not feel as if I could spare the money for it just at present, or even 
later on. It was too good of you to think of me so kindly. In fact, 
my private opinion is that you over-estimate my deserts, and think 
too much of me. I am not deserving of a fifth part of what you 
think I am deserving of. I have been reading eagerly in the volumes. 
To think of a man writing such verse as Tennyson wrote at such an 
early age, fourteen and twelve years! It is astonishing. And to note 
the noteworthy poems, from period to period, that he did not deem 
worthy of publication, almost makes one despair. The poems he 
suppressed would have made the reputation of an ordinary writer of 
the present day, like myself. Reading a work like this makes me 
feel too vividly the fruitlessness of my poor endeavors; makes me see 
too openly my limitations and my inability to ever even touch the 
lower hem of the robes of such art as was Tennyson's. He has set 
the standard of literary excellence in poetry so high that the coming 
generations of poets, not to mention the present little generation, will 
find it more than difficult, in fact impossible, to ever attain to such 
excellence, much less to surpass it. Shakespeare, Tennyson; 
Tennyson, Shakespeare: they are diversory names, and the greatest 
in the literature of the world. * * * 

1898, March id. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Every year it grows harder and 
harder for me to get my work accepted by the big magazines. I am 
quite discouraged now, and have finally made up my mind to cease 
submitting things to them altogether. I lose faith in myself and my 
ability when poems I consider very good, as good as I can make them, 
are invariably returned by these great criterions of literature. Those 
which, on sending away I thought a great deal of, on being returned, 
rejected, are like beautiful women out of favor, entirely distasteful 
to me and suspected of many faults which I never dreamed of before. 
This is not good for me ; it is not well ; and so, all in all, I think it better 
I stop writing or stop sending to the magazines of the East. * * * 

1898, March 14. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Every line I write I feel. My muse 
is in deadly earnest. The things come to me in a flash and are written 
on the very spur of the moment, myself being almost unaware of the 
fact. 

202 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

Your letter cheers me greatly. I thank you for your more than 
kind words, but can not help viewing my future as through a glass 
darkly — 

"The desire of the moth for the star, 

The night for the morrow, 

The devotion to something afar 

From the sphere of our sorrow," 

as Shelley says in one of his most exquisite lyrics. 

However, I have some news of verse even in these times of agita- 
tion and disregard of poetry. Get the new English poet's small 
volume of poems, read It and, like myself, despair! Stephen Phillips 
is his name and the volume is simply entitled Poems. Read 
"Marpessa" and "Christ in Hades," two of the noblest pieces of 
blank verse that have ever been written since Tennyson's "Oenone," 
"Ulysses" and "Tithonus." They easily, in my opinion, stand 
longside of those in a certain respect and remind you of all the great 
masters, Dante, Milton, and Tennyson. I have read them half a 
dozen times, something unusual for me, you know. * * * 

1898, March 30. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I was shocked to hear of the death of your 
father, and herewith tender you my sincere sympathy and condolence. 
Death is a thing that must come to all of us. Sorrow is the dim, sweet 
companion of Death. And without these two, how much less loved 
would the world be! It is they who give "the light that never was" 
to the "sea and land," that transforms them and beautifies them above 
the realities that they are, and makes them wonderful. * * * War 
[The Spanish-American War] is far from being a promoter of poetry 
of a peaceful character as this book's [Shapes and Shadows] verse is. 
Well , so be it. We are in fate's hands. Let her make or break us. 
Only I wish she would be less dilatory about one or the other. * * * 

1898, April 22. 

Harrison S. Morris : As you write in your letter of the seventeenth 
concerning the friendship existing between us, I heartily concur in 
everything you say, and will add this, that perhaps, as Theosophy 
teaches, besides this camaraderie there is also an affinity, subtle, secret 
and indestructible . Well, whatever it is, I know that it was your 
poems that first attracted me to you. Your work struck me as being 
perfect in many ways, individual and true. It is not necessary to 
say any more, I think; such a trinity speaks for itself, and could not 
help but impress one like myself who had made the art of poetry a 
study from his very teens. 

203 



Madison C aw e in 

I like the poems that you say you like in the volume [Shapes and 
Shadows]. As to the criticism you make regarding my pet "August" 
and the bee she holds to her "hushed ear," you evidently forget that 
it is August, the playmate of the bees, the birds and the buds, who is 
holding the bee! What bee would harm her! He would indeed be 
an ungrateful wretch, who, petted and pampered through her honeyed 
hours, would turn upon the sweetheart who caressed him. More- 
over, she only holds him to her ear to see whether or not his hum be 
well in tune with the wind and the water, the heat and the drowsy 
scents of hill and wood and meadow, and the sleepy heat of her own 
blood. * * * 

1898, April 28. 

R. E. Lee Gibson ; * * * You have always interested yourself 
so deeply in my work, and have expressed such great admiration for 
it, that I have been often at a loss how to show to you my appreciation 
of both. I have seized the opportunity of doing so, and dedicated 
my latest volume. Idyllic Monologues, to you, my friend. I think you 
will like the dedicatory stanzas when you see them. ["Foreword" or 
"To R. E. Lee Gibson"]. They are true of myself and of all poets 
of the present day; American poets, at any rate, and Southern and 
Western poets, particularly. * * * 

1898, July 4. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * I have been doing little or nothing 
in the way of verse, being totally stagnated and disheartened in that 
way by everything and many people — especially editors of magazines 
who return everything I think good, and into which I put much of 
myself. The "Afterword" of the Idyllic Monologues was the truest 
thing I ever wote, and may prove the last thing I shall ever have 
printed. Transit, etc. * * * 

1898, July 19. 

Miss Jenny Loring Robbins: Your letter [from Gerrish Island, 
Maine], just received, has filled me with unsatisfied longings for the 
sea which, I am afraid, will have to remain unsatisfied. It brought 
into the torrid weather, we are now enjoying here, the foam-filled 
coolness of the Maine Coast, and actually, while I read it, I could 
almost feel the sea-wind on my eyelids. 

But wood-fires in July! It seems incredible; and I must confess 
that I am afraid I am too completely a son of the South to be able to 
appreciate such an unnatural condition of affairs, so out of season, or 
to care for such when summer is so satisfying to me. Winter is always 

204 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

long and dreary to me, and I am always only too glad when summer is 
here, and never dream of abandoning her winsome womanhood for 
the austere and barren manhood of the other. But the ocean — that 
is different! I envy your close communion with that; the wild shore, 
the shimmering distance and the long rolling thunder of the surf, 
full of suggestive melancholy and whisperings of forgotten wrecks, 
old as the sorrows of the world. * * * j have been reading a 
volume of Emily Bronti's recently, called Wuthering Heights. Per- 
haps you are acquainted with it? It pleased me as much, if not more, 
than her sister Charlotte's novels pleased me. I am haunted by this 
one particularly; and if I can secure a copy I shall mail it to you. 
Being a sad and ghostly tale, it would read well to a wild and dreamy 
accompaniment of the ocean. It is full of tragedy and ghosts. It will 
haunt you. * * * 

1898, July 30. 

R. E. Lee Gibson : To say that I am disappointed in having your 
visit postponed until September tenth, is putting it very lightly. I 
had hoped to have you here during the hot weeks so that we might 
either take a trip up the Kentucky River, or to Rockcastle Springs 
in the mountains. I suppose I shall have to take the trip to the 
Springs by myself now if I go at all. 

The tenth of September is over a month off still, and there is no 
telling what may turn up between now and then. I shall try to have 
everything arranged so as to be entirely at liberty then, and so at 
your disposal. If we can't go up the Kentucky River or to Rock- 
castle Springs we can pay a flying visit to my father's farm, just 
sixteen miles outside [east of] the city, and loaf and invite our souls 
there for a day at least. I shall be glad to see you at any time, spring, 
summer or fall ; come whenever you can or are ready. 

I am far from hopeful over my poetical future. I have horrible 
cases of blues, more frequent and more persistently clinging than 
ever. I recognize the fact that I have done my best work and that 
falls deplorably short of what I set out with the great hope of doing. 
If you care about reading a kind word about my work, although my 
smallest and least important book is the one that is considered, get 
the August number of The Pall Mall Magazine and read the article 
therein on "Recent American Verse" by William Archer, the eminent 
English critic. 

By the way, I want to thank you for the magazine, The Chap- 
erone, which contained a sketch and a portrait of you. Of all the 
poems quoted therein and all the poets considered, with the exception 
of Eugene Field, your poem and yourself were the best. I certainly 
mean what I say. Write to me whenever you can and remember 
that I am always, Sincerely your friend, Madison J. Cawein. 

205 



Madison C aw e in 



1898, August 16. 



Harrison S. Morris: * * * Your sonnet on our late war with 
Spain is fine. It impressed me as being very strong and well worded. 
I have been looking for it in some magazine but in vain. I suppose 
the overwhelming amount of war-verse that inundated the country 
frightened you ofT, as it did me. Judging from the frequency of 
their work, Clinton Scollard and Robert Burns Wilson did more with 
their poetical bombardment to bring Spain to terms than Shafter and 
Sampson did. It was well for us to keep out of the way of their 
rapid-fire artillery and maintain cautious reserve and silence in our 
trenches. But really you should have published that sonnet; it was 
a very fine and dignified utterance. You did wrong to suppress it. 

I hope you have not entirely abandoned the muse * * * j^. 
would be a shame to treat the sweet wench in this foul manner after 
she had bestowed such great favors upon you. I suppose, however, 
that you have not entirely abandoned her, but are still courting her 
in secret, and, no doubt, in time will let the public know. * * * 

1898, August 16. 

Miss Jenny Loring Robbins: * * * j visited, together with 
my cousin, Fred, — who went to make sketches for the Louisville and 
Nashville Railroad, — a new cavern, discovered some two or three 
years ago, about a mile and a half from the Mammoth Cave. It is 
called the Colossal Cave, and comes up in every detail to the ad- 
jective that described it. I never was so impressed in my life as I was 
by its tremendous domes and pits, two of them 172 feet deep, almost 
twice as deep as the "bottomless pit" of the Mammoth. Stalactites 
as big as houses, and stalagmites to correspond, and an infinite array, 
row on row, of dripping, eternally dripping, gypsum and lime-stone 
formations. Galleries of sparkling crystal, flower-forms, and jewel also. 
Waters falling from darkness into mysterious depths. Echoes, hollow 
as the fleshless voice of death; eyeless fish, craw-fish and crickets, 
with ghostly and supernaturally elongated antennae. Here, indeed, 
one might dream that devastation had dragged his earthquake bulk 
to die, and at some primordial period of unhistoried time, shaken 
with his last convulsion the ruins of the world about him. "Caverns 
measureless to man," where eternal darkness reigns. * * * 

I am now exceedingly anxious to become better acquainted 
with Richard JefTeries. I know comparatively nothing of his works, 
having read more about him than by him. I sent you a little story of 
his published in The Bibelot, which you may find interesting as I did. 
Mr. Ellwanger, in his Idyllists of the Country Side, has a beautiful 
essay on his work, which, perhaps, you would enjoy reading after you 
return home from New England. * * * 

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A Posthumous Autobiography 

1898, August 31. 

James Whitcomb Riley: I want to congratulate you on the 
splendid notice of your work by Bliss Carman in The Atlantic for 
September. You are surely making your way among the best readers 
of poetry; and what I said a year or two ago, — after the death of 
Holmes, — is borne in upon me more and more with every new book 
by you — that you are our greatest poet, the worthy successor and equal 
of our greatest, — Longfellow, Emerson, and Lowell. In all respect 
and honor to you I take my hat oflf and proclaim that though not as 
learned as these, not having had the advantage of a college education 
as these poets of the East had — without their traditions and their 
positions in the society of scholars, — still you are their equal, against 
odds, in literary art; and in my estimation surpass them often in truth, 
imagery and music — winning, or having won, your way through your 
own efforts and inherent genius. The more honor to you, my dear 
friend. * * * 



1898, November 13. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I am glad that Charles H. Musgrove called 
to see you. * * * He is a fine fellow and, to my belief, an excellent 
poet, one of the best in our State, if not in the South. Read his great 
sonnet in last week's Harper s Weekly on the Red Cross Society. 
Nothing finer has ever been done in this country for a long time, I 
do believe. 

As to my unworthy self, I have done nothing since I saw you 
[in Louisville] last September. Harper s Magazine recently took a 
lyric [fourteen lines] entitled "Transubstantiation," for which they 
paid me something like two dollars a line. It was an agreeable 
surprise, I assure you. * * * 



1899, Januarys. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j have been working away on my 
new book [Myth and Romance] and have added a number of new poems 
which I think far ahead of much I have already done. My poem 
"When Ships Put Out to Sea" appears in the January number of The 
Truth, with an illustration. "Old Homes," which I read to you when 
you were here last September, appears in the December number of 
The Atlantic Monthly. I shall also have a poem in an early number 
of Harper s Magazine. But what does it all amount to? They do 
not take my best. * * * 

207 



Madison Cawein 

1899, January 30, St. Augustine, Florida. 

Miss Jenny Loring Robbins: I took the liberty of sending you a 
little box of kumquat oranges this morning not knowing but what you 
might be unacquainted with this peculiar fruit that is to be eaten skin 
and all. Now this is the kind of climate I can understand one seeking 
when the thermometer is playing hide-and-seek with zero away up 
yonder in Louisville; here where one can sit out on the piazza of the 
hotel and listen to the mocking-birds singing in the palmettos or the 
cherokee-rose vine; where the roses and the violets are blooming in the 
open air, and the mercury is in the neighborhood of seventy or eighty 
degrees. I cannot understand one's desiring anything better than 
perpetual spring or summer weather, except a preference for autumn — 
but winter! Deliver me from that wretched season of all seasons! 
And yet you and your mother seek it out, every year, up in Maine, 
and the Maine people come down here, seeking out summer when 
their state's program is winter. It is only a matter of temperament, 
however, and I did not begin this letter to find fault, but just to tell 
you that I endorse your sentiments, written me last summer from 
Maine, regarding the ocean. Here, however, I am sure the ocean is 
much more beautiful than it is off the coast of barren and bleak New 
England. What miles on miles of magnificent beach, solid and white 
as rock, on which the unwearying waves, the gracefully curving 
billows, beat continually! 

I have been to North and South Beach several times — once to 
North Beach in a yacht. The thunder of the surf — wildly white, on 
the desolate and abandoned coast, that is covered with its closely 
packed growth of scrub palmetto and live oak and heaped with its 
pale sand dunes — sounded to me like the throbbing of the vast heart 
of the world laboring under some enormous sorrow. It is a sorrowful 
country, this along the dark blue sea with its wild and sullen look, 
and moaning eternally with the tireless surf; a land deserted of 
people, inhabitants, over whose sombre waste the dwellings, once 
full of life, but now abandoned, gaze out with their battered fronts, 
windowless and doorless, like blind and famished mariners wrecked 
on a desert island. The marsh-hens call from the sea-marshes, and 
the heron or crane goes clanging away over the wan gray levels of the 
marsh-grass. The sea-gulls flash, and the great ungainly pelicans 
soar and dip and skim, like specks of scud, through the flying foam of 
the booming breakers. 

In St. Augustine things are different. Here we have the hotels — 
the finest in our country, perfect in every detail of architecture and 
otherwise, in whose courts the fountains flash and murmur, the 
flowers bloom, and the tropical trees whisper and wave; while along 
their sunny loggias music echoes and women and men laze or lounge 
faultlessly attired and carelessly at ease. I am not at ease, however, 

208 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

and shall leave tomorrow for Palm Beach, three hundred miles 
farther south — down the Indian River to Lake Worth, where, so 
report says, the world is Paradise, or the next thing to it. As I have 
always been rather inquisitive about that spot, I have decided to visit 
the locality. I go in a rather sceptical frame of mind regarding all 
that is said about it, so I have no fear of being greatly disappointed. 

My regards to your auntie [Miss Hattie Bishop, later Mrs. J. B. 
Speed] and to your mother [Mrs. Adam Robbins]. Very sincerely 
your friend, Madison Cawein, 

1899, February i, Palm Beach, Florida. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Only a brief line to let you know I am in 
Florida and enjoying myself greatly. It is very warm here at Palm 
Beach; the thermometer stands at nearly eighty, but the sea breeze 
is blowing and tempers things beautifully. I wish you were here by 
the ocean with me. The grounds of the Royal Ponciana are simply 
superb with their long avenues of cocoanut palms and palmetto trees 
and their great beds of tropical plants and flowers, their orange trees 
and lemon trees in bloom and at the same time loaded with green and 
ripe fruit. I have just come in from a stroll along the ocean beach 
also from a long walk by Lake Worth with its broad belt of cocoanut 
palms and its lovely grounds. The wind blows softly through the 
open windows and the sound of the surf and the fragrance of the 
flowers and grass and shrubbery, make it something akin to Paradise. 
* * * But I like St. Augustine much better. It is a beautiful 
place full of quaintness and interest, with its old fort and its narrow 
old streets. Its hotels are perfect gems of architecture, with their 
courts full of flowers and tropical trees and plants and their loggias 
that echo with the falling of the fountains and the music of the bands. 
I wish you were here with me to enjoy it all. I am sure it would fill 
you with poetical longings as it has me. My mother and sister who 
are in St. Augustine, of course, are quite a comfort to me. * * * 

1899, February 5, St. Augustine, Florida. 

Miss Jenny Loring Robbins: Your word concerning the weather 
you are having at home fills me full of a fierce desire to return and 
enjoy once more the wild winds of the North. 

I have just returned from an attempt to force my way into old 
Fort Marion — or as the Spaniards called it, San Marco — which is 
over three hundred years old and in which the captured Seminoles, 
along with their chief Osceola, were incarcerated after the Florida 
war. It is now a military prison of the United States Army; but the 
sergeant of the guard and the sentinel at the entrance over the moat 

209 



Madison C aw e in 

barred my passage, in spite of the fact that I flashed a pass from 
headquarters in their eyes ; and I was compelled to return along with 
some disappointed ladies to the hotel, hot and disgusted. 

Your letter awaited me like a cool breeze from the land of snow 
and I am greatly thankful, for it has refreshed me wonderfully. 
The thermometer stands above eighty today, but a breeze is fluttering 
the palmettos under my window, and under its dim persuasion I have 
been able to cast off languor and to write you a line or two. 

Since I wrote you I have been some three hundred miles south of 
St. Augustine, to Palm Beach and Lake Worth where the climate is 
something to wonder at. While you and yours were shivering over the 
gas, here we were wearing our very lightest garments and in surf- 
bathing, boating and jinrickshaing. 

The grounds of these vast hotels are simply marvellous; cocoanut 
palms, begonia, orange trees, hibiscus, lemon trees, oleanders, etc., 
etc., ad infinitum, all in bloom, or bearing fruit while blooming, 
combine with fountains, the sparkle of the Lake and the mellow 
murmurs of the breakers on the beach to make a place somewhat 
approaching what my idea of Paradise may be. 

Ours is a mighty country. What other country can you name 
that possesses such a variety of climates? In what other do we have 
such extremes? If we broil, we can pack our trunks and hie us away 
to Maine; if we freeze, we can do likewise and flutter away to Florida. 
It is quite a comfortable land, this that the good God has given us, 
and we ought to be very grateful and love it and Him — or should I 
say Him and it? — for the many blessings He has bestowed upon us 
through it. 

St. Augustine is my favorite, however, in spite of the great beauty 
of Palm Beach and its climate. I am here again for another week, 
when I return to Louisville. I am restless still, you see, and never 
contented. That is a curse, is it not? But are not all seekers after the 
ideal so? I think so! 

I have gathered strawberries and eaten them with great relish, 
as also oranges and guavas. The kumquat oranges I sent you are 
from farther south; I have not seen them growing here. I think them 
very aromatic and, as you say, a tiny Japanese sort of fruit, delicate 
and delightful. My regards to your mother and auntie. Very truly 
your friend. — Madison J. Cawein 



1899, February 14. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I enjoyed your letters to me in Florida. The 
trip now is like some warm, green dream, flowery and fragrant, that 
I dreamed long, long ago. How actually unreal are all our experiences 
after all when viewed in retrospection. If it were not for the remem- 

210 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

bered pleasure or pain, they would be really so, would they not? 
Longing and regret, perhaps, are the most real, material things we 
possess in life, since they are continually with us and hence [being], 
a portion of us, are really we. [They are] things we can never escape 
from — can never escape from. 

What you tell me about the literary man and the preacher in 
your Asylum [St. Louis Insane Asylum] has entertained me very 
much. The preacher may be right regarding Paul's appearance; 
but who can say — so may L I have never read, or heard of any 
authentic description of his appearance. At any rate, art has licenses 
and liberties which would justify me in giving him any form or man- 
ner I chose in order to arrive at, or attain to, the end, the represen- 
tation of the picture I had in mind. * * * 



1899, March 21. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j wonder at Rudyard Kipling's 
facility, his knowledge of humanity and his fertility. But he over- 
crowds all his works with strange, unusual words, with not-to-be-found- 
in-the-dictionary hosts of names of things and places which is sadly 
exasperating and savors much of striving for effect through bewildering 
of the reader's intellect and the consequent impressing on him of 
"How very little you know, my dear Sir or Madam," and "how much 
Mr. Kipling knows, you see." This is bad for Kipling's future fame, 
I am afraid, no matter how great his fame may be at the present day. 
Technicalities never do well in verse, no matter how human that 
verse may be, and his verse is simply overburdened with them. More- 
over he has not got rid of early influences like Browning and Tennyson. 
The first is very evident in his "McAndrew's Hymn;" the latter in 
"Song of the English," especially in those quatrains through which 
the various cities of England's many colonies speak; here the influence 
is decided and one sees the Tennyson of the "Palace of Art" and the 
"Dream of Fair Women" peering curiously out at him through alien 
eyeglasses. Also in his "Mary Gloster" we see Tennyson again, a 
debased, ignoble Tennyson, of vile and distorted physiognomy, the 
Tennyson of "The Grandmother" and other beautiful ballads of 
that kind. Then Percy's Reliques came in for a turn in the "Last 
Rhymeof True Thomas," and soon, and soon. * * * 



1899, March 30. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I want to thank you for the very great 
pleasure you have given to me in introducing such a remarkable 
writer as Mrs. Kate Chopin. I have been carefully reading her 

211 



Madison Cawein 

Bayou Folks for the past week and each succeeding story has elicited 
exclamation of delight from me. I do not know when I read a book 
that filled me with such enthusiasm. George W. Cable did at one 
time; and Charles Ebgert Craddock at another. To complete this 
marvelous trilogy who is more deserving than Kate Chopin? * * * 
The Awakening is a most beautiful and a most sad story. Mrs. 
Chopin made me feel everything she speaks of in this fine novel. 
* * * Have you read Harrison Robertson's new novelette, // / 
Were a Man? It has outsold all other books here, as well as in Wash- 
ington. Another story worth reading — a short one — is in the April 
Century. It is by a young lady friend of mine, Miss Abbie Carter 
Goodloe. The title of the story is "Jack," and in many ways is better 
than anything Rudyard Kipling has ever done, at least anything 
American he has ever attempted. * * * 



1899, May 17. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I have just returned from the country, our 
farm, where I have been soaking myself with May moonshine and 
loveliness, and find your letter awaiting me, together with two for- 
midable cylinders of proof from Putnam's * * * I flatter myself 
that it [Myth and Romance] contains, technically, my best work and 
that the poems therein are above the ordinary. I want you to give 
close reading to my favorites, especially "Anthem of Dawn," "Hymn 
to Desire," "Dithyramb ics," "Music" and "Jotunheim." * * * 



1899, May 19. 

James Whitcomb Riley: How long it has been since we have 
exchanged letters, and how very long since I saw you ! I had intended 
running up to Indianapolis last summer or fall just to grasp your 
genial fist, look in your kind face, and home again; but things inter- 
fered and I had to postpone that pleasure indefinitely. However, 
we don't forget each other, I am confident. And neither does our 
good friend, Mr. William Dean Howells, who, I observe, has given 
both of us a liberal amount of praise in the current number of The 
North American Review. My dear Riley, how you are at last coming 
into your own! As I prophesied some years ago, you are at last 
recognized as the leading, the greatest poet of America and, in my 
opinion, of the English speaking world. Mr. Howells, in his article 
on "The New Poetry," says so; and says so straight from his mouth — 
no circumlocutory vagueness about what he says; and he is the man 
to know, our greatest critic, our greatest writer of fiction. How well 
I remember carrying him your volume of Neighborly Poems some 

212 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

eight years ago, with an inscription from you in it, and how softly 
yet pleasantly his eyes sparkled when I presented it to him personally! 
How his estimate of your genius has never varied since that time. He 
never makes a mistake about the merits of a writer, and he is always 
happy and staunch in his loves. He has proven so in our cases, has 
he not? And we, I am sure, will never falter in our affection for such 
a man, such a whole-souled, unselfish, sweet nature — rare especially 
among literary men — as Howells'. 

I see your young friend Tarkington has blossomed forth into a 
writer of much ability in the current McClure's. Indianapolis is 
becoming quite a literary community. With love and heartiest 
congratulations, your friend as always, Madison Cawein, 



1899, May 30. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j suppose you have not read [in 
the proof sheets of Myth and Romance] "The Land of Illusion" and 
"The Spirit of Dreams;" nor the one entitled "The Purple Valleys," 
which is steeped in the very blood of my heart and full of myself 
and my soul's most terrible experience. I am sorry that you cannot 
see the imaginative superiority and sustained loftiness of my favorite 
"Jotunheim" which I consider, next to "Dionysia," the best thing 
in the volume. * * * The poems in the second part of the book are 
entirely different from the first, as you will observe, and in some ways 
inferior to those poems. However, there are a few that are worth 
while, I think — especially the last one, entitled "Processional," 
which is, to my mind, no matter what others may think of it. * * * 



1899, June 3. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I received your lovely sonnet and letters. 
* * * It seems to me that I am very unworthy of all you say 
of me, and especially of the sonnet which says such fine things in such 
beautiful words. I appreciate everything you take the trouble to 
write me; so much, however, that I, for the time being, at any rate, 
persuade myself that it is all true and that, perhaps, I am a pretty 
good poet. After awhile then it is borne in upon me that I am a 
writer with great limitations, and one who has happily done his best, 
not up to the average juvenile work of the great poets of literature. 
But why go on? You make me feel, at least for the time being, that 
I am great, in some respects, as a poet, and that is very gratifying. 
It would not be well for me to feel that way always, for then I am sure 
I should become even less than I am. * * * 

213 



Madison Cawein 

1899, August 18, St. Louis. 

Miss Jenny Loring Robbins: I met Mrs. Kate Chopin last evening 
together with a number of charming St. Louis people who seemed to 
be acquainted with my work, much to my surprise I must say. She 
is a lovely woman of fifty-two, but still fine-looking and capable of 
exciting the enthusiastic admiration of men much younger than her- 
self. She must have been very beautiful indeed when she was in her 
twenties and thirties. We passed a delightful evening of ghost stories 
and poetry. I thought of how you would have enjoyed it — the ghost 
stories especially. A Mr. Schuyler told some interesting ones, but I 
flatter myself that mine — in subject, at least, if not as well-worded 
as his — were the most thrilling. Mrs. Chopin is a great sceptic, but 
she seemed to be very much interested; perhaps, if given a chance I 
might be able to convert her to believing in them. * * * j j^^^^ 
intended merely dropping you a line, and behold my line has grown 
to a letter. I beg your pardon for imposing on your good nature and 
time in this manner. * * * 

1899, August 22. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * "The Tree-Toad" has been 
accepted by The Atlantic Monthly where the humble, homely little 
reptile will appear in due course of time. I found a most charming 
letter of some length from that distinguished magazine on my return 
[from my visit to you in St. Louis]. Mr. Bliss Perry, editor, goes into 
some length of admiration over the poem. * * * 

1899, September 21. 

R. E. Lee Gibson : I have just returned from a trip to the country 
where I have been enjoying myself with some young lady friends and 
a young poet, Cale Young Rice, who published a volume of verse 
[From Dusk to Dusk] last year. I wish you could see this beautiful 
country now, especially in the neighborhood of our farm. Everything 
is taking on the sad yet happy tone of early autumn. The drouth- 
dried creek-beds are strewn with fallen leaves and dropped acorns and 
walnuts. A dreamy haze rests on the evening landscape and the 
morning hills and woods show wild and vague under vanishing mist. 
Indeed, the surrounding fields and forests reminded me of Tennyson's 
poems, not because we read Tennyson under the cedars while resting 
ourselves, but because the country here is really Tennysonian; and 
he has described it unknowingly in his lines, especially in "In Memor- 
iam," as if he had lived here. * * * 

214 



A Posthumous Autob iography 
1899, September 28. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j shall be pleased to let you have 
some data necessary for the writing of a sketch of myself for The 
Hesperian. It is very kind of you to undertake such an amount of 
work. I was born, as you know, in Louisville, Kentucky, on the 
twenty-third day of March, 1865. I was educated in the public schools 
of this city and its immediate neighborhood. I resided several years 
during my early boyhood in the country in the vicinity of Louisville and 
New Albany, Indiana. Here I first absorbed myself in nature and 
learned my first lessons of love and poetry. After a five year course 
of study, I was graduated [June 11, 1886], receiving the degree of 
Bachelor of Arts, from the Male High School of this city. While 
attending this school I commenced writing verse. I was seventeen or 
eighteen years of age then, and used to hurry through my lessons at 
home in order to be able to write poetry at night. I often sat up until 
very late, one or two o'clock, writing. I accumulated quite a mass of 
MSS. in this way, from which I selected my first volume a year after I 
•graduated. I had sufficient MS. at that time to publish two large 
volumes, but after making a careful selection I burned the discarded 
heap of epics, ballads and lyrics, and published the selected pile under 
the title of Blooms of the Berry, which Mr. Howells reviewed most 
favorably in the Study of Harper's Magazine the following year. His 
review attracted the attention of other critics who had ignored my 
book up to this time. The Atlantic Monthly had also noticed my 
little book with favor. 

I was encouraged to go on, and so in the following spring, 1888, 
published my second volume. The Triumph of Music, which was even 
better received than my first volume by Mr. Howells. He gave it an 
elaborate and eulogistic review in the Study of Harper's Magazine. 
Since then I have gone on publishing, as you know, the different 
volumes of all of which you have copies. They are as follows in 
chronological order : * * * and Myth and Romance, i8gg. * * * 

1899, October 15. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I have just finished a careful reading of your 
article on my poetry you were kind enough to send to me. You have 
thoroughly covered the field, I must say, and every phase of my 
verse is shown up to advantage in your paper and treated in a masterly 
manner. You surprise me. I never knew you were such a fine critic 
before. You certainly show in this article that you can write excellent 
criticism if you desire to. However, you have not closely observed 
the admonition of the editor of The Hesperian [Alexander N. De Menil, 
St. Louis], not to make the article strictly a eulogistic one. Don't 

215 



Madison C aw e in 

you think he will object to it on those grounds? I hope not, as I 
should like to see it taken as it now stands. I am proud of it, and 
more than grateful to you. How can I express my thanks! There 
are no words adequate to do so when it comes to a question of such 
between friend and friend. You, I am sure, will understand and 
appreciate my feelings. 

One thing that I would suggest, however, is that you give the 
article a different ending. As it now stands it seems to me that the 
finale is weaker than any other portion of the paper. Some few 
words, a paragraph or two in conclusion, summing up my work in 
general or the future possibilities it suggests or is capable of, would 
be more appropriate and would clinch the subject more as a whole, 
rather than the single line commenting on the little quotation from 
"The Faery Morris." Don't you think so? Use your own judg- 
ment, however, about it. Whatever you think or say, I assure you, 
shall meet with my full approbation. [The article was published in 
the January-March, 1900, number of The Hesperian.] * * * 

1899, November i, 

R. E. Lee Gibson: In reply to Mr. De Menil's criticism con- 
cerning the conferring of the degree of B. A. by public schools in other 
cities — by high schools, I mean — he is probably right. That I re- 
ceived the degree from the Male High School of Louisville, Kentucky, 
I am certain, and my sheepskin diploma can attest. At the time I 
attended the High School of this city the course of study was a very 
high one. In it were included Greek, Latin, and German; the highest 
mathematics — geometry, trigonometry and calculus — the most diffi- 
cult and detested of all numbers were taught, to say nothing of physics, 
chemistry, logic and philosophy. Our course was a five year course. 
Since then it has been cut down to a four year course and many of 
the more abstruse studies eliminated. On graduating from the Louis- 
ville Male High School we were qualified B.A.'s and received a diploma 
to that effect. The course was so difficult that the classes graduated 
were small, very small compared with the later ones. At that time, 
a graduate from our High School was admitted without further exam- 
ination into the Sophomore Class of either Yale or Harvard. I 
thought it best to write this to you so that, if you desired, you might 
tell Mr. De Menil that you were correct in your assertion and that 
a diploma, if required, can be produced in proof of what you 
say. * * * 

I am writing a great deal again. Have recently had poems 
accepted by The Woman s Home Companion, Youth's Companion, 
The Saturday Evening Post, and a long poem of some fifty lines, en- 
titled "A Twilight Moth," by Lippincott's Magazine. All of the 
above took two or more poems at one time as offered. * * * 

216 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

1900, February 3. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I am glad to see that things are coming your 
way at last. It is no more than you and your poetry are deserving 
of. I am glad that you are to be given a prominent and special 
article in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Everything comes to him 
who waits, and at last it seems that St. Louis is becoming appreciative 
of a man who is really a poet and who has done some fine things in 
verse, at least, if not great things. Of course, we all can't be great 
poets like Browning, Swinbourne, Tennyson and Arnold; but then we 
can add our voices to the general choir which goes to make the litera- 
ture of the world, and enrich it by one lyric or more, as it may be. 
And why should it matter greatly to us if we are remembered by many 
books of great poetry or simply by a single fine poem? We are remem- 
bered; we are as much remembered, immortalized, by the one as by 
the other. It is an inheritance that cannot be taken from us. * * * 

1900, March 4. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j^^ present all literary labor is 
checked for me. I am laboring under the fear of some approaching 
financial catastrophe. I have something like half of my capital — on 
the interest of which I am now dependent for my living — invested in 
a concern here which, I learn confidentially from one in authority and 
who ought to know, will be compelled to quit business, go into the 
handsof a receiver or into liquidation. * * * 

1900, March 13. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j h^yg ^^^ j^st completed my re- 
writing of "One Day and Another" [originally published in Days and 
Dreams, 1891] and think that I have my best long poem in that. 
* * * I have done nothing else all winter but work steadily and 
conscientiously on this poem, and I think it is vastly improved. In 
fact, I do not hesitate to say that I know of nothing in modern poetical 
literature that is exactly like it, or better for that matter. I have 
worked every day and Sunday on it and am in love with it. It is a 
new poem now in many respects. * * * [The re-written poem 
comprises the booklet One Day and Another]. 

1900, April 14. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j^^ least two thirds of the poems 
which I have written during the past year have been accepted and 
paid for by various magazines in the East. * * * Thanks for 
your interest in my financial affairs. I did get out of one of those 

217 



Madison C aw e in 

companies at a small loss — some three hundred dollars. But it 
might have been ten times that amount. I have made it up, 
however, in some of the checks received for poems within the past six 
months. * * * 

1900, April 26. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * The only criticism I could make 
of your fine sonnet [Landscape], if I wanted to be hypercritical, is 
the transposition which occurs in the ninth line — "the complaining 
shrill." Riley at one time preached at me so tremendously against 
this old classic form that I have never recovered entirely from a certain 
prejudice towards all transpositions which he instilled into me with 
his vehement arguments. The last line of the sonnet is one to be very 
proud of. It is a fine figure and a fine climax to the poem. * * * 

1900, May 24. 

Miss Leigh Gordon Giltner: It has been a long, long time since 
I received a book of poems that gave me such unalloyed pleasure as 
your Path of Dreams has given me. Many of the poems I had read 
before, as you know, and had given you my opinion of; but it has 
been a reiterated delight to read them over again in this lovely little 
book. There is work in this book that stamps you as the first woman 
poet of the South, and indeed, I do not hesitate to say, perhaps, to 
be as great as any woman poet in this country or in England with 
whose work I am acquainted. You have very little if anything to 
fear from the critics with such work as this you give to them. Your 
coloring is sumptuous; your feeling and philosophy, great; your vocab- 
ulary, marvelous. 

Such poems as "A Challenge", "Carmen", and "In Bondage" 
are worthy of the very highest praise and they will receive it, I am 
certain. The "Path of Dreams" and "Sartor Resartus" are most 
impressive and any poet living might sign them with pride. As to 
your longer poem, of which you spoke so discouragingly to me at 
one time, it is very good and has interested and pleased me greatly; 
of course, it is suggestive of "Maud" which it slightly imitates in 
manner and style; and yet it is not Tennyson, no more than is your 
poem "When Love Passed By" Swinburne, because it is written in 
Swinburnian meter. "Roses and Rue" is a beautiful love story. Your 
sonnets are all good. "Hedonism" I like best. I was impressed by 
the little poem "Antithesis," which is a flawless and perfect jewel. 
Any poet at any time, or in any country, would be proud of this sad, 
simple, sweet truth expressed in eight graphic and harmonious lines. 
All of your pieces on nature show a master touch. Indeed, I do believe 

218 



A Posthumous Autobio graphy 

that with the publication of this book of yours most of the male poets 
of the South, of Kentucky at least, will have to retire and give prece- 
dence to you. There is no doubt about the excellence of this remarkable 
first book of yours, which is remarkable in many things and ways and 
over which I am very enthusiastic. 

Having concealed so thoroughly your sex under your name you 
will probably now have to suffer for it by submitting to be criticised 
by the reviews as a male poet and not a female one. They are usually 
kinder to the women poets than to the men, you know. But there is 
no femininity about your work, except that of deep devotion, love 
and passion which the women always do better than the men, because 
their emotions are greater and their love truer. With thanks and 
best wishes for success, your true friend always, Madison Cawein. 

1900, June 3. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * A week or so ago I received a check 
for seventy dollars from Harper's Magazine for two poems. They 
are entitled "Drouth" [36 lines] and "The Chipmunk" [32 lines]. 
I am sure you will like them. Together with the check came the 
proofs of the poems, and so I imagine they are to be published very 
early, perhaps this summer. * * * 

1900, June 20. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Your letter from Thomas Bailey Aldrich 
interested me very much indeed, particularly the good words about 
Riley's Flying Islands of the Night. But the whole letter was most 
interesting and one that you should treasure, as no doubt you will, 
among your most precious souvenirs. 

The two sonnets you sent me are flawless. I have no criticism 
to make on such fine work as that represented in the one entitled 
"Tyranny." It reminds one of the best things, in this difificult form, 
that Keats has done. Indeed, I do not think that Keats would have 
hesitated to attach his name to "Tyranny." It is beautiful, and if 
you don't get it accepted by some magazine I should consider my- 
self a poor judge and a false prophet. Send it away as it stands now; 
send it to Harper's Magazine. Do not send it, however, on paper 
bearing the letterhead of the St. Louis Insane Asylum, but give 
them your Arsenal Street address. Magazine editors are queer fish, 
and if they thought you were connected with an Insane Asylum 
would probably reject the manuscript without giving it even a read- 
ing. The best way is to let them know nothing about your method 
of obtaining a living, you personally, or your occupation. I have 
found it so; you will likewise. ["Tyranny" appeared in the Cosmo- 
politan, October, 1900.] * * * 

219 



Madison Cawein 

1900, September 2. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * As I have told you before, and 
often, all that is needed by you is a little patience and perseverance. 
Your sonnets are noble and notable. * * * Keep on, my dear 
old boy, and cheer up! I think periods of despondency are worst 
and most frequent during the summer months. It must be the heat 
and the summer silence and sadness that conduce to bring about that 
physical and spiritual condition in the poetic temperament. I don't 
know what it is, anyhow: All I know is that during the greater 
part of August I, too, suffer unutterably from melancholy, despond- 
ency, blues, whatever you call it; and time and again wished I were 
dead — that life's "fitful fever" were finally ended once and for all 
and for good. I weary, as you do, I know, of the terrible burden 
of existence, the endless struggle for attainment, the pitiless irony of 
the actual, and all the misery, uselessness and emptiness of effort. 
Where will it all end? I often ask, and what is the use? Two terrible 
enigmas that God only can unriddle. * * * 

1900, Novembers. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j enclose a three-column notice 
["Madison Capwein : The Omar Khayyan of the Ohio Valley, by Carrie 
S. Mahoney," from The Constitution, Sunday, November 4, 1900] chiefly 
drawn from your article in The Hesperian and from your letter to 
the author [Carl C. Marshall] of the article published last year in the 
Puritan. I never saw an article so butchered before by the compos- 
itor and proof-reader. I feel sorry for Old Omar and Dr. John Clark 
Ridpath both of whom are murdered here in name, if not in fact — to 
say nothing of my poor self with whose name they have committed 
all sorts of gymnastic feats, spelling it three different ways; the last 
one, "Carrien," is too suggestive of the dead which I hope even liter- 
arily I am far from being as yet. Miss Mahoney — for whom I feel 
very sorry, indeed — is all broken up over the article. She meant so 
well, and to have her well-meant praise turned into such a burlesque 
is enough to exasperate a saint. And this paper is the world-famous 
Constitution of Atlanta, Georgia! Well, they do work wonders in 
Atlanta sometimes, don't they? * * * 

I agree with you regarding Rufus J. Childress' poetry. He 
occasionally writes a good strong line; in fact, frequently, but as a 
sustained effort of merit only one poem in his book Woods and Waters 
passes muster. That one poem is his "Ode to a Robin." [Re- 
published in Blades of Bluegrass, an anthology of Kentucky poetry.] 
It stands out like an oasis in the desert. The man is self-deluded. 
He thinks himself a very great poet, as great as Shelley, Keats, or 

220 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

Tennyson, and does not hesitate to tell you so, or to print it in little 
advertisement pamphlets to increase the sale of his "first volume of 
poems." He is to be greatly pitied, however, being almost destitute, 
with a large family on his hands. He was a milk-man, driving a 
milk wagon for a number of years at a very poor salary. And 
recently, up to within several months ago, was employed at a bread 
and cracker factory here in Louisville. He was discharged from it — 
it is a Trust — when he undertook the publication of his book. Since 
then he has waged a bitter war against all trusts in verse. He pub- 
lished a satire against them last month which, though it lacks ridicule 
— a necessary concomitant of all satire — contains some strong lines 
and thoughts. All in all, considering his circumstances, it is really 
remarkable to see what the man has done. Most of it, of course, 
is the merest rot — doggerel. But his love, his desire, his intention is 
all right. He has written stacks of stuff. He tells me that he has 
sufficient material on hand to make three books of the size of Woods 
and Waters. He is a great enthusiast about all poetry, especially 
about mine, and converses well and rationally. But when it comes to 
his poetry — count me out. Your friend as always, Madison Cawein. 



1900, December 9. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * ]VIr. Bert Finck was highly de- 
lighted with your letter to him concerning his Webs, as he justly should 
be. He permitted me to read it and I must say that what you said 
in it any author would be proud of. The book is one that to my 
thinking would impress anybody as being original and the work of a 
man of talent. It is epigrammatic and full of aphorisms; and not 
only that, but there is poetry in it — real live, pulsating poetry. Had 
he been a Walt Whitman or a Stephen Crane he would have arranged 
his lines in poetical order and called his volume a volume of verses — 
and he would have been just as correct about it as they were about 
theirs, and perhaps a little more so, eh? * * * 



1901, Januarys. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I am sorry to hear that you, too, are ailing. 
That seems to be a chronic condition in our household. Everyone, 
more or less, is sick. I suppose I may call myself the chief ailer, as 
I have been sick now almost a month. All sorts of complications 
have set in ; my whole system is run down and full of fever and aches 
and God knows what else. I wonder if I shall ever get well again? 
I have two doctors and they ought to kill or cure me — the former 
would probably be the more desirable, as I have lost all interest in 

221 



Madison C aw e in 

everything — absolutely everything on earth. Poetry, especially my 
own, fills me with deepest disgust, and I cannot contemplate the 
writing or the reading of it without infinite loathing. Apathy seems 
to be my chronic state, and a desire to sit and brood and wish the 
whole sorry business of existence were at an end. 

As to my book, I do not even think about it any more, much 
less inquire as to when it will be out. Its fate will be the fate of all 
the rest of my books — failure is printed on and over its title page. 
It too will receive a few good notices and bad, perhaps, and then drop 
into oblivion like all the rest. I am disheartened, sick, and weary of 
it all— all the fight, the struggle against irresistible fate. I have 
not written a line for weeks, nor looked at anything I ever wrote for 
months. This is a bad state to be in at the beginning of the new 
year, my friend, but it is due, I suppose, to my physical condition 
which is deplorable. But enough of this repining. 

The poem, "Dusk," you refer to was not published in The 
Saturday Evening Post but in the January Munseys. I am glad you 
admire it, but I myself could scarcely read it through with patience. 
But everything of mine seems worse than vile to me now. 

I cannot give you an opinion of your poem on the "New Century" 
now. It strikes me as having some strong lines in it, but I believe 
that you have done many better things than this. When are you 
going to place your book in the hands of a publisher? You never say 
a word about it any more. I hope that you have not given up the idea 
altogether. * * * 

^ Your reference to Charles J. O'Malley makes me tell you that 
he is going to leave Louisville for Pittsburg, I hear. No literary men 
can live in this wretched town. There is no encouragement, nothing 
in it for them. Your friend ever, M.J. Cawein. 



1901, March 12. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I thank you for your kind letter of sympathy. 
My father's death [March 7, 1901], happening as it did so suddenly 
and away from home — for he was not stricken at home as the news- 
papers had it, but in a grocery whither he had gone to make some 
purchases — has filled our hearts and our house with gloom and 
sorrow. * * * 

The winter, thank God, that is almost past, has been the most 
completely miserable and unhappy one that I ever experienced. For 
three months fully I was ill myself, and had been well for two or three 
weeks when this bereavement had to happen. Of course, writing of 
any sort has been entirely out of the question with me. * * * 



222 



A Posthumous Autob iography 

1901, April i. 

R. E. Lee Gibson : Your letter leaves me somewhat in doubt as to 
the improvement made in my new version of "One Day and Another" 
You say that "nearly all of the lyrics have been improved." "Nearly 
all" means that some have not been benefited by my revision, and 
I intended that every one should be. I labored long and greatly at 
this poem, trying to make it perfect, and hoped that I had made it 
so, as much so as it is capable of being made so. If I have failed 
it is simply the fault of my talent, that is all. 

You do not say anything in your letter about the lyrics added, 
that are entirely new. Only one or two seem to have caught your 
fancy: [Beginning] "Over the fields of millet," and "What little 
things are those." These two are probably the best, but there are 
several others that I thought a great deal of. As to the changes made 
in the poem [beginning] "Perhaps we lived in the days," etc., they 
were made with care and circumspection, after long and deep con- 
sideration. The poem originally simply bristled with transpositions, 
which always indicate amateurishness. I set out with the determina- 
tion to eliminate as many of those as I could. Some still remain. 
The poem as a whole is little changed throughout. Your objection 
to the omission of the two lines — "Mouth like a pomegranate split, 
with the light of her language lit," may be correct and justifiable. 
But I think that the two lines substituted, "Mouth like a cloven 
peach, sweet with her smiling speech," are more effective and in 
some respects more beautiful. That "split" in the first version was 
not to be endured, moreover it was a transposition. Also, the line 
"Tall shaped like the letter I," was exceedingly bad. The letter "I" 
has no form whatever, straight up and down, but I wanted to convey 
the idea of how she carried herself, so I changed it to "She stands 
like the letter I," etc., which is far more effective, to my thinking. 
I think that in time you too will come to care more for this new 
version of that lyric than you do for the old. I hope so. * * * 



1901, April 30. 

Miss Jenny Loring Robbins: I have been visiting the beautiful 
country a great deal; in fact every day since the advent of spring, 
and have found the wild-flowers more abundant this year than in any 
previous spring of my recollection. Especially of Eastern Park 
[Cherokee Park] is this true. Their delicate and beautiful hosts simply 
swarm over its sward and have taken its woods and hillsides by storm. 
It's a sight worth seeing. * * * 



223 



Madison C aw e in 
1901, May 31. 

R. E. Lee Gibson ; * * * i read your letter last night to my 
friend, Dr. Henry A. Cottell, to whom the book [Weeds hy the Wall] 
is dedicated, and he was as pleased with it as I myself was. * * * 
If all that you say about the book is true — but I can hardly believe 
it is in the face of other facts, reviews, particularly that are to be — then 
I am indeed a lucky fellow, and one to be greatly envied by the rest 
of the poets in the country. * * * 

1901, June 28. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * i gent you a copy of Judge with a 
poem of mine in it, illustrated. It is quite different from my other 
work and was written in exasperation to an ice-cold girl whom I have 
been trying to make fall in love with me for the past four or five 
years, but who just persistently won't. I'll have to try to let up trying 
now, I think, and turn my attention to some other girl, kinder if not 
fairer. Do you know of any such who would like to take a poet in 
out of the cold? * * * [Xhe poem referred to appeared in Judge, 
June 29, 1901, under the title "To Let." The original MS. was pre- 
sented to Miss Gertrude McKelvey and is still preserved. It is 
headed. "The Girl of Girls — to the tune of 'They're Hanging Danny 
Deever.' " In it Mr. Cawein gives Gertrude as the name of the girl of 
whom he complains and whose heart is "to let". In the printed poem 
the name is Lydia. The poem was not reprinted in any of the Cawein 
books.] 

1901, August 18. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j have called recently on Miss 
Hattie Bishop [Mrs. J. B. Speed] and Miss Jenny Robbins. They 
are staunch admirers of you — your poetry, your character and your 
nature — and were delighted with your call. You certainly impressed 
them. Miss Hattie told me to tell you that she will not be able to 
get those flowers from the grave of Keats for several months yet, 
because all her friends are away from Rome just now and will not 
return until September or October. When they return she will have 
the flowers gathered and sent to you. * * * 

1901, August 25. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * RJiey was here yesterday and I 
passed a delightful day with him. Dr. Cottell and Young E. Allison. 
We took lunch at Seelbach's Restaurant and had a very good time. 

224 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

It was not quite as fine as our evening at Fontaine Ferry Park 
[a month ago when you were here] ; that evening could hardly be dupli- 
cated or bettered to my thinking. Riley looks greatly improved. He 
particularly asked me about you. He spoke appreciatively of you as 
a man and a poet. * * * 



1901, August 26. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j have just received a letter from 
the great Edmund Gosse in which he offers to be sponsor for a volume 
of selected poems to be published in London. He said he has often 
been asked "to be sponsor for American poets but has always refused." 
He continues thus: "for, unless one is quite in sympathy with a writer, 
such a task is the heaviest of burdens. But to you — who have never 
suggested such a thing — I would say that it would be a great and 
genuine pleasure to me to introduce a selection of your work, if you 
ever thought of such a thing." Is not that encouraging, coming from 
so great a critic and literary man as Edmund Gosse is? * * * 



1 90 1, September 15. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * i have been so wrought up over 
the disaster that has befallen our country through the hand of an 
assassin, that I have, for the time being, practically given up writing. 
The death of McKinley is terrible! terrible! I have not had anything 
to affect me so since the killing of Garfield. No punishment on earth 
is adequate to the crime. * * * 



1901 , September 24. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: The news you have for me is very depressing. 
Why do children, little innocent children, have to suffer so? I am 
more than grieved to hear of little Elaine's illness [Elaine Cawein 
Gibson]. Typhoid fever is terrible, but not so bad as scarlet fever. 
I do not think there is any disease on earth as bad as the latter. So 
thank your stars that it is not the scarlet fever that she has. My 
mother told me to tell you that your little girl would get well. She 
can usually tell. I don't know how, but it is so. She was able to 
foretell the recovery of our own little boy even when the doctor, his 
father [Dr. Charles L. Cawein], and mother and everybody else had 
given up hope. Your baby will get well. [And both are alive to- 
day — 1 92 1.] 

225 



Madison C aw e in 

I had a great time in Cincinnati, at the Convention of Authors 
and Editors of the Ohio Valley. I met a number of lovely people, 
some known, some unknown to me, but all literary or doing literary 
work. * * * I ^as given a reception by a very nice gentleman, 
Charles T. Greve, the Chairman of the Convention, a lawyer and a 
critic, at his beautiful and tasteful home. I do not know why he 
selected me especially for the honor, there being older, much older, 
and better men, authors and poets, than myself present. But we 
had a very elaborate entertainment Then I met the poet John 
James Piatt, and William Henry Venable; also Charles Frederic Goss, 
author of The Redemption of David Carson, and several other prom- 
inent writers, editors and publishers. 

On my return I found an acceptation, inclosing a check for $20.00 
from Harper s Magazine. It was for a poem, a sonnet, that I dreamed, 
wrote while in my sleep as it were, or that was suggested in sleep to 
me. It is entitled "The Death of Love." I cannot repeat certain 
linesof it to myself without experiencing inexplicable emotion. * * * 

1901 , September 27. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * John P. Morton & Company said 
your Sonnets and Lyrics would be ready for delivery next Monday. 
[Sonnets and Lyrics, by R. E. Lee Gibson, is dedicated to Cawein.] 
* * * The first ones to whom I shall deliver copies out of the 
twenty-five allotted to me are Dr. Cottell, Miss Hattie Bishop, Miss 
Jenny Robbins, Miss Anna Blanche McGill and Miss Gertrude 
McKelvey, who, by the way, has left me for New York, where she 
went to study music. I feel the separation is a permanent one; I 
don't know why. I miss her greatly. I shall also give Bert Finck 
and Cale Young Rice one. I shall send a copy to William Dean 
Howells and any other friends who I think will appreciate it, * * * 

1901, October II. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * i read Lucien V. Rule's letter to 
you. It is a very fine tribute to you as a poet. He means everything 
he says. He is a very conscientious man and says only what he means. 
He is a scholar as well as a poet and essayist of fine intellect. He 
is no poor critic, either. * * * 

1901, October 26. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j enclose a letter and a clipping. 
The letter is from a young lady friend of mine, Miss Leigh Gordon 
Giltner, of Eminence, Kentucky, who writes for the magazines and 

226 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

has published one volume of most excellent verse, The Path of Dreams 
[1900]. She is quite well known to our people of Kentucky. She 
writes critical articles as well as poetry and fiction for the Eastern 
press and magazines. The clipping is from the New Orleans Times- 
Democrat and was written by one of the loveliest young ladies as well 
as writers of Louisiana, Miss Helen Pitkins, the "La Belle Helene" 
of Weeds by the Wall. 

She is a poetess, as well as a writer of stories, and they say, the 
highest salaried newspaper woman in the South. We have corresponded 
for years but have never met. She is a great society girl also; a 
personal friend of Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Lilian Whiting. * * * 



1901, October 26. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I just had a letter from Edmund Gosse, 
written from Venice, from the palace where Browning used to live 
when there, and at the very table and window at which Browning 
used to sit and write. Mr. Gosse is very flattering and I suppose I 
ought to be swelled to twice my natural size by his offer to make a 
gift to me of the introduction to my prospective volume of selections 
to be published in England. I have made the selections and am 
having them typewritten now. The work is fairly launched and, if 
Mr. Gosse approves and can find a publisher for it in London, 
I suppose we shall see it printed some time next year, either spring 
or fall. [Published in 1902 as Kentucky Poems]. * * * 



1901, November 4. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j finished my selection last Sat- 
urday and sent the MS. away at once to Mr. Gosse in London. It 
comprises over two hundred pages of typewritten matter, which Mr. 
Gosse will treat independently, cutting out a great deal, I have no 
doubt, and adding perhaps, some pieces that he approves of. It is 
a great compliment that Mr. Gosse is paying me, and I appreciate it 
highly, I tell you. That he should volunteer to undertake this work 
for me and find a publisher is more than I ever dreamed of. * * * 



1 90 1, November 10. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j ji^ve just received a copy of 
William Archer's Poets of the Younger Generation. It contains a full- 
page portrait of myself and eleven pages about my poetry, with 
extracts. The criticism is a fair one and, coming from such an eminent 

227 



Madison C aw e in 

English authority, is one that I am proud of, indeed. The American 
poets treated of in the volume number hardly a half dozen, the other 
twenty-seven are all Englishmen, Kipling, Watson, Phillips, 
Thompson, etc. You ought to get this book; it will introduce to 
you a lot of magnificent verse, some of which you, like myself, could 
never have seen before. The book is published by John Lane, Lon- 
don, and can be had through your bookseller. The price is high — six 
dollars — but the volume is worth it, * * * 



1901, December 19. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * What you said in your former 
letter regarding Archer's article in Poets of the Younger Generation, 
is true. I myself was at first very much put out, chagrined in fact, 
with the beginning and the ending of the article. But after I had 
read the other articles I felt better, as Mr. Archer was rather severe, 
at times, with them all, even with Phillips. * * * 



1902, January 2. 

Edmund W. Taylor: The only fault that I have to find with your 
little book of poems [The Issue and Other Poems] is that it is too small 
and the poems too few. But what you lack in quantity you make up 
in quality. * * * j h^ye not gotten over the beauty of "The 
Roses in the Garden" yet, and I shall not soon, I am certain. It is a 
poem that would have delighted the soul of Heine, I am sure — so 
high, so pure, so exquisitely perfect. "Reflection" I had the pleasure 
of hearing you repeat at one time. It is a fine piece of work and very 
satisfying. The two quatrains, "The Poet," pleased me greatly. 
In fact, as I said before, there is not a poem in the little book that 
does not sing itself into the memory. * * * j ^j^ g]^,^ ^q extend 
to you the hand of fraternity in our "brotherhood of song." * * * 



1902, January 26. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j ^j^ slowly rewriting everything 
that I care to retain in Moods and Memories. After that I shall take 
up Days and Dreams or what is left of it since the new publication 
of "One Day and Another." * * * All of my changes I think will 
be for the betterment of the poems. * * * j (jon't know how 
long I have to live and I want to leave my work in a good state when 
I do have to go. I want to be satisfied with it, and I am far from being 

228 



A Posthumo us Autobiography 

that at present with my earliest work. I don't seem to get any better 
in that trouble that has taken hold of my kidneys. It depresses 
me very much occasionally. 

Mr. Gosse writes me that the poems in MS. sent to him by me 
have pleased him greatly; that all my changes have vastly improved 
the poems. Some of them are so changed as to be almost new; indeed, 
they are new in a certain sense. He says that the beauty of my nature 
work impresses him more and more. * * * 

Yes, my mother was married and that to a very excellent gentle- 
man, Mr. J. Henry Doerr. You may have met him when you were 
here at one time. He has been a noble friend of our family for years, 
and was associated, at one time, with my father in business. They, 
with my sister, are enjoying the beauties of Florida now, and will 
be away until April the first. 

Sometimes I think that I ought to get married and lead a different 
life from what I do lead. But a man never knows what sort of a woman 
he is getting until he is tied to one. I might be very happy, married, 
who knows; and then I might be the contrary. I am nearly thirty- 
seven years old, and that is considerable! Moreover, making and 
keeping up of a home takes considerable money, and time also. I 
might not be able to afford it, and might have to take some position 
or other which would take away from my time for literary labor. 
The girl I think most of does not seem to think most of me. She 
[Miss Gertrude McKelvey] left long ago, last September, for New 
York City, and is studying music there. I don't think that she loves 
me, but she is a very good friend of mine. It might be different, 
perhaps, if I were different, and there might be a marriage. Who 
knows what fate has in store for us anyway? * * * 



1902, April 6. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * My limbs have swollen to such 
proportions as to almost necessitate my dispensing with shoes and 
underwear. * * * Qod knows where it will all end. I have not 
been a drinking or a dissipated man, and why I should be afflicted 
with this disease, is one of the mysteries of destiny I suppose. Dropsy, 
of all diseases, I loath and abhor. Of course I am not doing any 
work. * * * 



1902, May 4, LiTHiA Springs, Georgia. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j have just returned from a long 
walk in the Georgia woods. How I do wish you were here with me to 
enjoy the heavenly beauty of the May as she demonstrates herself here 

229 



Madison C aw e i n 

at Lithia Springs. The mocking bird makes the mornings melodious. 
The thrushes, fluting like the pipes of Pan or of Fauns hidden away 
deep in the pines and oaks, lure one to follow on and on until one 
loses himself in dreams among the wild flowers. I never saw such 
an abundance of wild flowers as there is here. The ways are covered 
with them. The woods are full of them. It is such a glory to walk 
and see and breathe it all. The winds are warm and the air smells 
like locust-honey and wine of balsam. The days are calm and blue 
and sweet as a dream of youth. The nights are calm and serene 
and beautiful as a dream of love. It is a land, a region of rest and 
love and poetry. * * * 

1902, May 8, Lithia Springs, Georgia. 

Lucien V. Rule: I received your letter yesterday and was very 
glad to hear from you. I am sorry that I missed the pleasure of seeing 
you when you were in town [Louisville], but then you might come 
down here and we could have a nice long talk together and a nicer, 
longer walk in the woods surrounding this beautiful hotel. It is very 
picturesque and romantic around Lithia Springs, whose waters are 
doing me a great deal of good, I think. I am also taking the baths 
that, being also of lithia water, are benefiting me greatly. I expect 
to return home a well man, deo volente. 

The woods here are overgrown with wild-flowers; wild honey- 
suckle, wild phlox and calacanthus; and ferns! — in masses, sometimes 
above your waist. The brooks bubble over beds of crystal, honestly 
and virtually speaking, — not figuratively,— for everywhere, in the 
fields, on the roads, in the woods, are scattered boulders and pebbles 
and pieces of sparkling white spar, which is crystal of some sort. I 
have seen lots of it and the creeks ripple and babble musically 
over it. 

Near the hotel [Sweetwater Park Hotel] is a place going absolutely 
to ruin now; in its time it was a Chautauqua, where revivals were 
held, meetings of all sort, for pleasure, religion and politics. Vast 
buildings, built in the forest, stuccoed and of fantastic yet beautiful 
architecture of the Moorish order, with towers and turrets and loggias; 
also a large amphitheatre capable of seating thousands, are slowly 
moulding to decay here. What was once an artificial lake, covering 
several acres, is now merely a frog-pond filled with mud and weeds 
in whose center an old oar boat is slowly rotting. 

It is a very picturesque place; and in one spot there is a mound 
some twenty or thirty feet high up which and around which all wound 
a road. The road is scarcely discernible now, for the entire mound 
is overgrown with the tame honey-suckle vines, commencing to bloom, 
and forms a fragrant tombstone for the dead body of the old place 
lying mouldering there. I love to climb to the top of this green and 

230 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

fragrant monument and stand there and watch the sunset in the 
West, and listen to the wind in the pines that seems mourning some- 
thing lost and never to be found again — Never! Never! 

It is a lovely place, altogether, this hotel, with its charming 
people and its beautiful grounds filled with flowers and trees, the holly, 
the locust, the oak and sweet gum; roses and fountains, syringa 
bushes and mountain laurel in full bloom and over it all the blue sky 
of Georgia vibrating with the melody of birds, the mocking bird and 
the thrush, whose note is the sweetest I ever heard. 

Write me again if you can and remember me as always your 
friend, Madison J. Cawein. 



1902, May 9, LiTHiA Springs, Georgia. 

Miss Jenny Loring Robbins: This is really the loveliest place I 
have ever visited, and I am falling more and more in love with the 
hotel, its grounds, and the people in and around them, to say nothing 
of the woods and the waters, the latter of which I am drinking with 
much gusto and, I hope, benefit. 

I have been here over a week now and must say have never in my 
life come across such an abundance, such a profusion of wild-flowers 
before. I am very sorry that I did not bring my wild-flower books 
along with me, as there are a number that I am unable to identify 
or get anybody to name for me. I have just returned from the woods — 
there is plenty of forest-land around the hotel, woods of pine and oak 
mostly, but beeches and tulip-poplars here and there — and brought 
with me a bunch of beautiful wild-flowers. In fact I keep a glass full 
in my room continually — every day, almost, changing the old for the 
new, and every day new varieties. I have found in profusion the 
false Solomon's-seal blooming here; I never saw it before in our 
locality. Ferns, too, that are simply enormous, filling the lush green 
valleys of the brooks with their fronds, often reaching to my chest, 
and from their centres shooting up an auburn-red spike of fairy-like 
seeds. The calacanthus, too, I have found growing wild in the woods 
and in full bloom; the negroes here call it "sweet-shrub," but the 
wild variety, larger and ruddier in blossom than the cultivated, has 
no odor — that is, none that I could perceive. The blue-eyed grass, 
the bluet, the rattlesnake weed, wild phlox are blooming here in 
abundance; the latter especially. I never saw such fine specimens — 
or am I mistaken in calling it the wild phlox? Coming to think of it 
now, it reminds me more of the sweet- William and I believe it is the 
sweet- William. 

When I arrived here last week, a little over a week ago, the woods 
were massed, simply blurred with bushes of the wild honeysuckle in 
full bloom. That is a sight that cannot be described; I shall never 

231 



Madison C awe in 

forget the sumptuousness of the appearance of the banks and hillsides 
and the woodways gorgeous with the butterfly-hke blossoms of this 
beautiful bush. The pansy-violets, too, laid their great clumps of 
utterly violet blossoms about the forests, which, along with the wild 
sweet- William, gave one the impression of beds of living coals of azure 
and crimson. There are wild-flowers coming on now — the honeysuckle 
and the pansy-violet being almost all gone — that I cannot name, that 
defy and evade me. A beautiful yellow flower that looks like an 
evening-primrose, delicately yellow, with four rounded petals, eight 
stamens, and a pistil cleft at the top into four parts, is dotting the 
woods like fire-flies. Its stem is about a foot tall and its leaves lanceo- 
late. Then another flower that looks like the bloom of the rat-tail 
cactus, only it is white instead of scarlet, growing on an airy stalk 
from a whorl of leaves at its root, its stalk utterly leafless, has baffled 
me. It is white like our elder at home, about two inches, — sometimes 
more, — long, and smells like our elder-blossom. Another one is a 
bush covered with white slender-petaled blossoms, star-shaped, six 
petaled, smelling like heliotrope. And so on, and so on; low and high 
wild-flowers, shrubs, bushes and plants. Such a whirl, such a profusion 
I never saw before in my life; all that we have in Kentucky, and 
many more besides. Only I have not seen the May-apple here — not 
a stalk of it. The cross-vine, I found out its name, trails up and over 
the trees, here and there. Its blossoms hang in great clusters, and are 
conical-shaped like the gloxinia; outside they are colored a dirty 
purple turning to smoky yellow at the mouth of the blossom; the 
interior is a port-wine red; sombre and sullen it hangs or drops above 
you; it has a bitter acrid odor, not at all pleasant. 

I go into the woods a great deal, and find much to interest me 
there. The wild-flowers first and then the brooks. These make the 
forest musical with their low voices, babbling as they do literally over 
crystal. This is the truth. Everywhere, in field and wood, by roadside 
and in the road or footpath, are splinters, pebbles and rocks of white 
crystal, and others full of mica and pyrites. The beds of the creeks are 
paven and filled with large pebbles, sometimes great boulders of this 
spar, over which the water flows clear and sweet and smooth. 

I have found a number of old mills here. All dilapidated, or 
going to ruin; one a total ruin. One on Austell Run is supposed to be 
still in operation, but I have been there twice and neither time have 
I seen a soul. On the Sweetwater Creek, six miles from here, I found 
an old grist-mill, below a rushing and roaring dam. It is a great 
gaunt thing of frame, weather-beaten and old, but still in operation. 
A half mile below it, under a wild hill-side, on which the dog-wood 
was blooming in profusion, together with the wild honeysuckle, the 
other mill, built of rock and brick, towers five stories high. It was 
burned by General Sherman during the war and stands a sad relic of 
that time. It was a cotton mill, and the workers in it lived on the 

232 



i 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

hillside in their cottages, but their homes were burned also and not 
a vestige of them is left. Only the ruin — here is a wilderness of trees, 
great trees, grown up in its gaunt interior, crowding its crumbling 
walls, and the wild vines and creepers trailing over and covering its 
rocks and bricks — stands pathetically looking out upon the tumbling 
waters beneath and the projecting pines around. The creek, wooded 
wildly on both sides, foams and roars past it, over huge rocks and bould- 
ers, upon which it stares with its one mighty arch of stone, in which 
the mill-wheel once rushed and sounded, and its empty windows, 
like hollow eyes in the face of death. 

This is a long letter; I hope you will forgive me for it. Now I 
shall go out on the verandah and watch the sunset over the pines. 
They are beautiful and serene here, always quiet — not angry or 
stormy. Give my regards to your aunt and remember me to your 
mother. Your friend always, Madison J. Cawein. 



1902, May II, LiTHiA Springs, Georgia. 

James Whitcomb Riley: Your note did me lots of good, coming 
just in the nick of time when Mr. [Robert W.] Geiger was visiting me 
at Sweetwater. He and the rest of the literary clan, Harris and 
Stanton [Evelyn Harris and Frank L. Stanton who called on Mr. 
Cawein], want you to come down here. The beauty o' the May, as 
she demonstrates herself in Georgia, is something to dream about, 
not to attempt to describe. How could you get the wild honey- 
suckle, that masses the woodways with its white and pink fragility, 
like that of butterflies, into words? And then there are the crowfoot, 
or pansy-violets, bluer than her own blue skies, and the rattlesnake 
weed more golden than her own aureate dawns and dusks. These 
have passed, or are passing, but new glories are taking their places, — 
there are ferns, you know, almost as tall as yourself, with their red- 
brown spikes of fern seed that, they say, the Fairies use to make 
themselves invisible with, and which when sprinkled in the shoes o' 
mortals, on St. John's eve, makes them as invisible as the Fairies. 
The wild calacanthus, the false Solomon's-seal and the bluets now 
have their turn, and a hundred others after them. The thrushes and 
the cat-birds simply fag themselves out whistling their azure 
and golden-uniformed hosts up in the woods, and the pines and the 
oaks and the tulip-trees whisper their approval, and applaud their 
cavalcades. 

Well, here I am, and delighted am I with the hotel and everybody 
in it. But I can't say that I am getting well rapidly. I thought 
I was improved last week, and believe I was, but the albumen that I 
find on testing in the morning and the dropsical condition persisting, 
and somewhat increasing, in my limbs, tell me I am not much better 

233 



Madison C aw e in 

for all the water I drink and all the baths I take. And so, about 
Friday or Saturday next will find me wending my weary way home 
again to commence the nauseating round of medicine-taking once 
more. I don't know where it is going to end. Nothing seems to 
benefit me. Things that benefit, that cure, other people don't have 
any effect on me. Your friend always with the old esteem and 
affection, Madison Cawein. 

P. S. Will probably see Joel Harris Wednesday. He is still 
ailing, but sends me word he wants to see me. Cawein. 

1902, May 19, LiTHiA Springs, Georgia. 

James Whitcomb Riley: * * * j g^^ Uncle Remus [in 
Atlanta] last week and enjoyed an hour-or-so's talk with him at his 
beautiful home in the West End. Stanton was with me, also Evelyn 
Harris [son of Joel Chandler Harris]. Joel Chandler Harris looks 
poorly. He is still a very sick man, I am sorry to say. Mr. Geiger 
and Stanton were out to see me last Saturday, stayed to supper and 
we had quite a walk and considerable of a talk. I am returning home 
today. Shall go to Atlanta as the guest of Mr. Geiger for a day or 
so, then home once more. I have not been improved by the drinking 
of the waters here. My condition is about the same as it was when 
I came here. However, I have enjoyed myself greatly, wandering 
around the country and sitting on the veranda or under the trees 
meeting people and watching the roses bloom. * * * 

My English volume of Kentucky Poems, with an introduction 
by Edmund Gosse, will be out sometime next month, I think; 
so look out for a copy; I am going to fire one at your kindly 
countenance. * * * 

1902, June 8. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j h^ve been so long at revising my 
old poems that the new ones refuse to come. I have finished the 
volume at last for the American Selection and which I shall probably 
try to get published in the fall. I like it even better than I do the 
English Selection [Kentucky Poems]. It is larger and, moreover, 
contains other poems than nature ones. I call it "In the Garden of 
Polymina." * * * [The American Selection was abandoned. In 
1907 The Poems of Madison Cawein in five volumes, was published.] 

I feel languid and tired so much now, and very few things interest 
or entertain me as they used to. Even the girls have ceased to hold 
me as they used to. That's a bad sign, isn't it? But they are usually 
such a disturbing element in the lives of all men that I feel as if I 
ought to congratulate myself on being able to be indifferent to both 
their blandishments and their coquetries. * * * 

234 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

1902, July 6. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j have been doing a good deal of new 
work lately. I have written a number of nature poems which I think 
as good as my best and which I am sure will please you. I am feeling 
about the same. No better and no worse. My condition is at a stand- 
still. * * * I do not know why Kentucky Poems has not appeared, 
unless it is that the coronation of King Edward postponed its publi- 
cation. Not a word have I heard from Gosse, or Richards, the 
publisher. * * * 

1902, July 20. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j ^j^ g\did that you, your wife and 
little daughter are coming to Louisville on the twenty-ninth. I am sure 
we shall have a good time again. * * * I am blue about many things. 
The main one, of course, is my continued bad health * * * and the 
general futility of all literary work as to poetry, in this wretched 
world. You can work yourself to death and no attention is paid, 
or very little, to what you do, perhaps, until you are dead and buried. 
My life, too, is monotonous. * * * 

1902, August 30. 

R. E. Lee Gibson ; * * * Your letter, which I re-inclose to 
you, from my good friend, Harrison S. Morris, is one to preserve and 
be proud of. He is a fine poet, one of the best in the East. I have his 
Madonna and Other Poems. He has written some of the finest sonnets 
that have ever been written in this country, barring none, not even 
Longfellow's. It is something to have an artist like Morris commend 
one's work. * * * 



1902, September 14. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * The English volume is certainly a 
thing of beauty to the eye; I thought that it would please you 
very much. As to the changes that you condemn in "Frost" and 
"Unrequited," I am totally to blame for them. I cannot agree with 
you as to the spoiling of these two poems by the changes I have 
made in them. "Frost" was such a deplorable amateurish perform- 
ance that I was going to reject it entirely, but thought better after- 
wards and cut it down [from ten stanzas] to four or five stanzas, after 
carefully deliberating on the changes necessary to give it sense and 

235 



Madison Cawein 

still leave it poetry. The line which you deplore, "His wand a pot of 
pounded pearls " is nonsense. How can a wand be a pot? In no con- 
ceivable manner can the one be transformed into the other. Besides, 
a harlequin's wand is supposed to work wonders by its touch alone — 
it is not used to spread anything on something else, as a brush or 
knife is. You see I merely contained in this line the figure of the 
harlequin — frost changing with a touch of his wand the fields and 
the woods to something "new and strange." 

Then in "Unrequited": The last stanza before indicated the 
man had died as the bird lay dead. This was wrong. The man and the 
bird did not die; both were simply wounded. The first by the 
unapproachableness of the maiden desired, his love being unrequited, 
and the bird by the thorns of the rose, which typed the sharpness 
of the girls' disapproval of the man's suit. But if I have to explain 
these things to you and they seem unbeautiful and feebler than the 
original, then truly I have failed in my purpose which was to make 
the ideas clearer, more convincing and truer to nature. The best 
poems in the volume I think you have overlooked: These are 
"Summer," "To Sorrow," "Night," "The Haunted House," "The 
Dream" and "The Tollman's Daughter." * * * 



1902, October 3. 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich: I was glad to receive your kind letter 
acknowledging the receipt of the volume of mine just published in 
England. But, my dear Mr. Aldrich, how can you say that Mr. 
Gosse is wrong about the vitiated public taste in this country for 
things that are "smart, snappy and wide-awake," instead of for 
things that are deep, serious and beautiful in verse? — There is hardly 
a publisher — I really believe there is not one — in this country who 
will at the present day undertake, at his own expense, the publica- 
tion of a volume of American poems that are not "smart" and 
"snappy" or drivel sentimentally or humorously in dialect. There 
is no call — or at least the call is very slight — for poetry that deals 
with the eternal contemplation of nature; poetry that makes one 
think; and one has to bring a certain amount of intellect to the study 
and the understanding of. At least it is so in this part of the country. 
I don't know how it is in Boston and New York. But I do know that 
nearly every young publishing house that devoted itself more or less 
to the publication of high-class verse in those cities, Boston especially, 
had to make an assignment. The publishing houses of Eugene 
Field, James Whitcomb Riley, [Will Carleton] the author of "Betsy 
and I Are Out," etc., are flourishing and prospering. 

Within the past few months I have been confirmed in my belief 
that serious poetry has had its day in this country; it is wanted 

236 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

neither by the public nor the publisher; there is no call for it. Mr. 
Howells had offered to write an introduction for a volume of selec- 
tions to be brought out in this country at the same time that the 
volume of selections with Mr. Gosse's introduction was brought out 
in England. The selections of course were to be entirely different 
from those in the English volume. But, do you know that even 
with Mr. Howells' name on the title-page the publishing house with 
which he is associated absolutely refused to consider such a book. 
Would not even give a reading to the MS. It was quite different in 
England, where, even before the MS. was ready to submit to the 
publisher, the work had been taken simply on Mr. Gosse's endorse- 
ment. I have merely stated what has come under my own observa- 
tion and spoke from my own experience. Very sincerely yours, 
Madison Cawein. 



1902, October 12. 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich: I was very much interested in what 
you had to say about poetry and its popularity in this country. You 
are speaking, of course, of the East, of your selection of the States. 
Now here in the Southwest it seems to me that affairs relative to 
serious poetry present quite a different appearance. I inquired at 
our largest bookstore regarding the demand and sales of volumes of 
poetry and found that even the demand for such standard poets as 
Longfellow, Tennyson, Whittier, Browning, etc., has fallen off con- 
siderably within the past decade. As for the newer writers of verse 
there is scarcely ever a call for their work — only Stephen Phillips, I 
think. His plays are in some request, but that probably is because his 
poetry is presented in a dramatic form, not in lyrical or epical. It 
might be different if he confined himself to strictly lyrical verse. 
Kipling, of course, sold, but at present there is no demand for his 
books of poems. Riley and Eugene Field sell steadily for the same 
reason that Kipling does — namely "rag-time." As for poets who are 
doing really serious work, such poets as Bliss Carman, C. D. G. 
Roberts, Miss Guiney, etc., the book sellers tell me that they never 
order any of their books to be placed on sale as there is no demand 
for them. Those that they had supplied their shelves with at one 
time, including Richard Hovey's works, have long since been relegated 
to the fifty and twenty-five cent counter, and even there they do 
not sell. 

I do really believe that the younger generation of Americans 
read less poetry than the younger generation of any other nation on 
the civilized globe. They are compelled to read a certain amount at 
school and college, but after their school and college days are over 
Longfellow and Tennyson are laid away to gather dust, and the modern 

237 



Madison C aw e in 

hastily-written novel holds complete sway over their intellects. It 
is the older men and women who still confess a fondness for the poets, 
living or dead, and interest themselves to a certain degree. What 
you say about the same condition of affairs prevailing in England 
gives me small hope for the future of poetry. One has to eat and 
drink and sleep even if one does write poetry, and if one cannot live 
thereby one will have to die — or struggle to make a living by some- 
thing else. Yours most sincerely, Madison Cawein. 



1902, October 13. 

Mrs. M. P. Ferris: I see in the September number of the American 
Author a notice of a volume of poems, a compilation entitled Kentucky 
Poems published last summer in London, England. Although the 
author of the volume, myself, I had nothing to do with the selecting 
of the poems and nothing at all to do with the publishing of the same. 
Mr. Edmund Gosse proposed voluntarily to make the selection 
from my various published volumes of verse and to find a publisher 
for the same. He also proposed writing the introduction, something 
which he told me in a letter at the time he had never done for any 
American poet before, although solicited many times by the friends 
of various Eastern poets to do so. 

I wish you would correct the statement in your next issue of The 
Author that "I am bringing out the book" and that I have named it 
Kentucky Poems. Mr. Gosse must have the credit for both of the 
above facts as well as the preface. 

As to the criticisms which you say in your article that The 
New York Tribune alleges are now appearing in England lamenting 
the weakness of the poems in Mr. Gosse's selection, I will only say 
that I have before me a letter just received from Mr. Gosse in which 
he speaks positively of the sympathy and the praise which the volume 
is receiving at the hands of the critics all over England. I, myself, 
have seen several of these reviews; one published in the Academy and 
Literature on the 13th of September, a special editorial article which, 
while it was critical, "lamented" nothing as the Tribune alleges, and 
in its entirety would have afforded delight to the heart of any poet, 
no matter whom he might be, great or small. However, even if the 
criticisms were unfavorable, as the Tribune alleges, who are these 
critics, English or American, for that matter? Not one of them holds 
the position in letters held by Mr. Wm. Dean Howells on this side of 
the Atlantic, and Mr. Edmund Gosse on the other side. Both of 
these gentlemen have hitherto found much to praise in my work and 
are still finding much to praise. 

Had you read Mr. Gosse's introduction to Kentucky Poems, 
you would have readily seen that he was bound to make me envious 

238 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

enemies on this side of the water by the great praise he bestowed upon 
my work. In fact I look for nothing in this country now, from the 
hands of the critics, except injustice. Yours truly, Madison Cawein. 
[From the original in the collection of William F. Gable.] 



1902, October 25. 

R. E. Lee Gibson ; * * * Ernest McGaffey called to see me 
about two weeks ago. He dropped in one morning early. He was 
passing through Louisville with his wife and some friends and had 
only an hour or two to give to me. He is a charming and a fine 
fellow. I like him exceedingly. He has a lovely personality and 
his wife is a lovely lady. I gave him one or two of my volumes, those 
that he did not possess, and yesterday received by express his four 
published volumes, all beautifully autographed. In fact he, at 
infinite pains, wrote a poem in each one of them for my special pleasure. 
His Sonnets to a Wife I consider a beautiful piece of bookmaking. He 
tells me it has sold well — some two thousand copies or more. Poems 
of the Town contains, I think, some very powerful poems; all are on 
sorry and sordid subjects, well written though, and often very dra- 
matic. He is really a poet — a poet of the people though. He writes 
to me urging me to visit him and his wife in Chicago. * * * 



1902, November 13. 

James Whitcomb Riley: All of our hearts are overflowing with 
the laughter of Joyous Children, mine first and foremost of them all, 
and the genial Doctor's and Allison's, after mine. What a beautiful 
gift, in more ways than one, is that beautiful book to us — to the 
world in fact. The delight of its summer smile, its sweet and summer 
laughter will never stale, will never age as we ourselves shall. Every 
poem in it I have read and re-read with reiterated pleasure, with an 
appreciation that I cannot tell you in the confines of four sheets of 
a letter, a brief note. 

Ah, my dear old friend, how you do get at the heart of a child. 
No one can interpret the child-heart as you interpret it. You are a 
past master at that as you are at many other things in poetry. But 
the most difficult, I think, is this genius of knowing so intimately 
and so thoroughly the souls of the little ones. You, in your book of 
Joyous Children, make me live over again the days of my childhood, 
when I, too, was just a little freckled-faced "kid" living back in the 
hills of Indiana, "the knobs," they call 'em, and walking two and a 
half miles every day, fall, winter and spring, to the little old district 
school in the suburbs of New Albany. Your wonderful art is not art, 

239 



Madison Cawein 

it is something more for which we have no name — even inspiration, 
genius do not describe it; and lacking words to say exactly what it 
is, I'll just have to give it up and invent a new term for it which is — 
Riley. Your affectionate friend always, Madison Cawein. 



1902, November 19. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Your letter afforded me great pleasure. I 
am glad that the poems [A Voice on the Wind], most of which you 
heard me read last summer, bore a careful re-reading. That is a pretty 
good test. But I am weary of the struggle. I write and toil and worry, 
and to what end? Everything seems futile and in vain. The world 
seems lost in the consideration of something else, and something 
that is far from being poetry. Nobody, except a few dreamers like 
yourself and myself, wants poetry. Trash suits them better. I expect 
no justice any more from any critics outside of Mr. Howells and 
Mr. Gosse. The rest are a devouring pack of demon dogs snarling and 
snapping at my heels. The book which I expected so much from, that 
I hoped would turn the tide of criticism in my favor, the Kentucky 
Poems I mean, has scarcely created a ripple, a stir, in the great waters 
of literature. There is nothing but injustice and disfavor, abuse and 
ridicule, for me and my work in the newspapers of the East. It hurts 
the sales of the book even if it does not convince the people — who 
know and who can appreciate real poetry when they see it — that 
it is not poetry. Dutton & Company of New York, the American 
publishers of Kentucky Poems, write me that the book is not selling. 
The reason is very evident: Critics and the public want things, as 
Mr. Gosse says in his introduction, that are "wide-awake," "smart" 
and "snappy." There is no encouragement for the class of poetry 
that I write, and, I fear, never will be. What is the use of keeping on, 
I ask and re-ask myself. The same history will be repeated in respect 
to my last book, A Voice on the Wind. I know it will either be ignored 
completely, as Weeds by the Wall was, or else abused and ridiculed 
as that same little volume was by The New York Sun. What hope 
is there for me or any writer of serious verse — nature verse — in 
the future in this country! None, I fear, especially when he lives 
in the South, as I do. 

I shall attend to the expressing of those twelve copies [A Voice 
on the Wind] today. The book will be on sale the latter part of this 
week, I believe, but I hardly expect to sell more than a dozen of it, 
if I sell that many. How many Kentucky Poems do you think they 
sold here in Louisville? One firm sold a half-a-dozen copies; another 
one exactly ten copies. It's the same old story. Nobody reads poetry 
nor wants to read it. For my part, I am disinclined to write any 
more now. Your friend as always and forever, Madison Cawein. 

240 



A Posthumous Autobiography 



1902, December 4. 

John Russell Hayes: I was greatly pleased with your article 
[in Public Ledger, Philadelphia, November 30, 1902], on Kentucky 
Poems. It is the ablest, the most appreciative criticism my book has 
as yet received in this country. If you will, I wish that you would mail 
a copy of it to Mr. Edmund Gosse, No, 17 Hanover Terrace, Regents 
Park, N. W., London, England. 

Mr. Gosse wrote me some two months ago asking me what the 
critics were saying about the book, "our book," as he puts it. But 
I was only able to send him the notices that had appeared in our 
local papers here, which, of course, were favorable. The Eastern 
press has merely mentioned the book so far, or ignored it. I have 
seen only one criticism of it and that was an insult to Mr. Gosse as 
well as to myself. It appeared in The New York Tribune which has, 
together with two or three other papers in New York, always abused 
my work. It angered me because of the vile attack made upon Mr. 
Gosse and I wrote an ironical letter to the miserable sheet which the 
editor had the kindness to publish in full, together with the one to 
himself. Probably he thought at the time he did so, that he was 
placing me in a ridiculous attitude, but nothing could have pleased me 
better. I have ceased reading the alleged criticisms that my books 
receive from the newspaper critics, both East and West. All they 
[the newspaper, not magazine critics] know anything about is dialect 
nonsense and so-called humorous verse. Real poetry is totally un- 
known to them. Such a criticism as yours, though, I should like very 
much for Mr. Gosse himself to see; I am sure he would appreciate 
it as much as I do. * * * The volumes which Mr. William Archer 
did not see, or read if he saw them, and which I consider my best, 
are the following: Intimations of the Beautiful (which you will recollect 
Mr. Gosse spoke most highly of in his Introduction to Kentucky 
Poems), The Garden of Dreams, Idyllic Monologues, a volume of 
narrative poems, now out of print. Shapes and Shadows, and Weeds 
by the Wall. Yesterday I mailed you a copy of my little book, just 
published, which represents the work I have done within the past 
year. I arn enclosing a sheet, as you requested, with the list of my 
preferences in Kentucky Poems. * * * 

My favorite poems in Kentucky Poems are as follows: First and 
foremost, "Summer"; following it in the order named: "To Sorrow," 
"A Twilight Moth," "Reverie," "The Farmstead," "The Boy Col- 
umbus," "A Fallen Beech," "After Rain," "Prologue," the second 
"October" and "A Dream Shape." Most of the above named poems 
were suggested or inspired by direct contact with nature and by the 
reading of poetry — I have forgotten whose. Madison Cawein. 



241 



Madison C aw e in 



1903, February 2. 



R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * "Masque of Judgment" is the 
greatest thing that has been done in this country for many and many 
a year. WilHam Vaughn Moody's blank verse is as great, if not 
greater than Stephen PhilHps', and he easily surpasses him in imagi- 
nation. But, like Phillips, he is no lyrist; he cannot write exquisitely 
musical rhymed verse. When he takes to rhyming he falls down 
lamentably. But the "Masque of Judgment" is a great poem. I 
linger wonderingly over it now, reading pages again and again. * * * 

1903, March 17. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * fhe magazines are at last taking 
notice of my Kentucky Poems * * * In the March number 
of The Reader the poet Bliss Carman gives a two page-notice to Ken- 
tucky Poems — did I say the poems? I was wrong, it is to the Intro- 
duction. My name and the poems are mentioned exactly once. 
But the notice of notices is in the spring number of The Book Lover, a 
beautiful large magazine published in New York. It is written by 
Professor John Russell Hayes, assistant professor of literature at 
Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania. The article is headed "A 
Disciple of Keats" and is most beautifully written, besides being 
one of the unadulterated praises. Kentucky Poems, by the way, in 
spite of all the harsh criticism it has received in this country — induced 
simply by envy and nothing else on the part of these poet critics of 
the East — has gone into a second edition in England. * * * 

1903, April 23. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j ^^^ about to change my condi- 
tion of life. Gertrude McKelvey and I are to be married on the 
fourth day of June. We have decided that we can be very happy 
together and so will undertake to be so by the usual method — the 
altar. Our wedding is to be a very quiet one. No invitations are to 
be issued, and immediately after the ceremony we leave for 
Colorado. * * * 

1903, April 29. 

Miss Anna Blanche McGill: Your lovely letter of congratulation 
is the first one I have received, and has given me more pleasure than 
I can tell you in a brief letter or in words. 

Indeed, my dear Anna Blanche, I hope that all my girl friends, 
who have contributed so much to my pleasure heretofore, will not 

242 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

now consider themselves less my friends in that I am about to make 
one of their charming coterie my wife. I desire this more sincerely 
in your case than in that of any of the others. Not only because I 
have known you longer, but because I feel that our interest in the 
same art, which is literature, has established, for a long time now, a 
sincerer bond of friendship and fellowship between us than has been 
established in the cases of the others. Such friendships, which are 
the truly Platonic ones, are never broken off entirely and never 
forgotten. 

I hope to establish a home, one of poetry and music — or should 
the latter precede the former for the sake of harmony? — and to which 
I, and Gertrude, too, I am sure, will always be more than happy to 
welcome you and yours. * * * 



1903, June 2. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Your wife's beautiful present of 
lace arrived yesterday and Gertrude went into ecstasy over it. * * * 
Last night Dr. Cottell gave us a perfectly beautiful dinner at the 
Pendennis Club. Fifteen were present, including Reverend R. 
Estill of St. Paul's Episcopal church who is to marry us on Thursday. 
We will look for you at the depot [in St. Louis] Thursday at 6.36 
P. M. * * * [A dinner was given by Mr. Gibson at the Planters 
Hotel, St. Louis, on the evening of the fourth.] 



1903, June 4: 

Mr. and Mrs. John F. McKelvey announce the marriage of their 
daughter, Gertrude Foster, to Mr. Madison J. Cawein, Thursday, June 
the fourth, nineteen hundred and three, Louisville, Kentucky. At home 
after July tenth, 10^ West Burnett. 



1903. June 16, Manitou, Colorado. 

James Whitcomb Riley: Well, here I am at the foot of Pike's 
Peak, in the heart of the Rockies, with the loveliest and sweetest 
girl in the world, spending my honeymoon. I have thought of you 
many a time during our jaunts among the canons and cliffs, watching 
the mists gather and descend on the mountain heights, or gathering 
wild flowers, of which there is a vast profusion as well as variety, 
among the heaven-kissing hills, or sitting wondering by some moun- 
tain-torrent flinging its wild waters down the bouldered sides of a 

243 



Madison C awe in 

precipice in many a foaming and roaming cascade; like some snow- 
white nymph tossing her arms of foam above her head and flaunting 
her wild hair of spray to the music of the wind-rocked pines. 

Riley, you must not forget me now I have "done gone and got 
married." My wife is a beautiful, a talented girl; a singer as well 
as a musician; a reader of the best literature and appreciative of the 
best poetry, present and past. She has read your work, as every 
one has, and is full of enthusiasm for it. She is a girl of mind as 
well as soul, and to the home on Burnett Street, in Louisville, she 
will be only too glad to welcome you whenever you deign to favor 
us with a visit. 

I have furnished a home and intend making it one of music and 
poetry, and hope that you will not forget that the latch-string is 
hanging out, away out, for you at any time you see fit to find and 
pull it. Your affectionate friend, Madison Cawein. 



1903, June 21, Manitou Colorado. 

Dr. Henry A Cottell: * * * We have been to Cripple Creek, 
to Monument Park, and to North Cheyenne Canon, also to The 
Cascades, up Ute Pass since last I wrote you. The scenery along the 
Denver and Rio Grande Railroad is indescribably magnificent. We 
wound round and round the Rockies, for miles, at an altitude of over 
ten thousand feet, looking down upon gulch and mountain torrent, 
ravine and canon crowded with pines and dwarf oaks, and foaming 
with cataracts; looking up at crag and cliff and precipice, crown'd 
with cedar and tortured pine and bush, and often hurling its foaming 
stream, like a trailing veil of thinnest lawn from its huge shoulders 
of gray or red granite. As we approached Cripple Creek, far away, 
along the horizon, under the wild interchange and shifting lights of 
storm and sun, stretching, as it were, into infinity, the barriers of 
the world, crowned with everlasting snow, we beheld the vast range 
of the Sangre de Christo Mountains A sight I shall never forget. 
Now glittering and now dim, now vague and now massed in splendor, 
under the shifting gleams and glooms of the now shining and now 
threatening heavens. These mountains of the Great Divide beckoned 
and lured like great, low radiantly white clouds of sunset lands. 

Cripple Creek is the most God-forgotten place on earth. With 
its mountain sides filled with little or large cavities, digged by the 
gold-prospectors in the "fierce race for wealth." Ruin it proves and 
has proven too often. 

Last week we went up Pike's Peak, and truly felt ourselves very 
much up in the world: The view from this height is something 
indescribable. The cloud-effects would have baffled Ruskin himself 
to describe. The snow was, in places, some eight feet deep, and before 

244 



A Posthumous Autob iography 

we went up the snow plow had to be brought into use. It was very- 
cold and disagreeable and came on to rain before we descended. 
It was an experience, however, that I would not have missed for the 
world. 

We have met many charming people here, appreciative of poetry 
and music, and we have often thought how nice it would be to have 
the dear old Doctor with us to entertain them as well as ourselves, 
with apt quotations from the poets. For instance, last night when we 
all picnicked on a mountain-top back of the hotel, under the sunset 
and the stars, with Pike's Peak in the back-ground. How lovely it 
would have been to have had you by us on the rocks, near to the 
great roaring, gusty fire of pine boughs, drinking delicious cofifee, 
and eating delicious lamb chops, boiled and broiled over the fragrant 
fire of pine. Until late into the night we sat there wrapped in cloaks 
and overcoats, on the rocks around the fire, under the taciturn and 
glittering stars, telling ghost stories. 

Again it would have been nice to have had you with us when we 
rode last Friday some twelve miles or more through a lonely country 
of rocks and prairie, through the mesa, beyond the Garden of the 
Gods to Monument Park, with its strange and fantastically weird 
rocks, shaped like great mushrooms and gigantic toadstools, each 
with its tapering stem of white sandstone, often eighty feet high, 
and its top of red sandstone, often ten and twenty feet in circum- 
ference. Here under the pines we picnicked and "loafed and invited 
our souls." The land is a blur of wild flowers. Great carmine dabs 
of Indian warrior pinks, and yellow dashes and daubs of a golden 
flower I know not the name of; streaks of the wild geraniums, pink as 
sea-shells and blue bells of the mertensia, and purple stocks, and wide, 
transparently white and tender pink strips of the primroses, as 
large at times as a tea-saucer, and growing low on the ground. * * * 

1903. June 24, Manitou, Colorado. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * I wish you could be with us on our 
jaunts to the various places around Manitou and Colorado Springs, 
The magnificent mountain scenery! The canons, the natural parks, 
the gorges and gulches! * * * But I find myself longing for simpler 
scenery, more pastoral, more peaceful. I shall be glad to get back 
home once more, back to Old Kentucky. * * * 

1903, August 10. 

James Whitcomb Riley: My dear good friend and playmate, 
"Bud Riley" — The Book of Joyous Children, in its green cover of 
limp leather, — the color so suggestive of joy, — containing the 
loveliest of all inscriptions to my unworthy self, has been received. 

245 



Madison C aw e in 

A hundred thousand thanks! Ah, old friend, you are too good to me! 
The poem first and now the new edition of the book are too many 
drops in my cup of happiness ! I must retahate in some way ! in kind ! — 
I have no new book, or new edition of a book, to fire at your devoted 
and laureled head, bj here goes for a poem. Can and will you stand 
for it? 

To Old Bud Rilby 

Over the railfence of the years, 

That climbs and crumbles between our lands, 

Old Bud Riley, I stretch my hands 

Full of my love, so it appears 

As the boy's young hands that once you knew, 

Filled with my boyhood's love of you, 

Swift to laughter and quick to tears. 

The same old love that once you knew 

When you and I went wandering through 

Song's flowery fields, despite her frown. 

And piped to our sweetheart, freckled and brown. 

Sweet Country Muse, in homespun gown. 

Who smiled upon you, then on me again. 

As we tuned our reeds in the sun and rain. 

Far from the crowd and the deafening town. 

Boys, just boys in Song's Domain. 

Yours with all my heart's friend-and-fellow-ship, Madison Cawein. 

[Six lines were added, and the poem published in The Poet, the 
Fool and the Faeries. Cawein retained a copy of the original poem by 
writing it on a flyleaf of The Book of Joyous Dreams, opposite Riley's 
inscription which reads: 

"To Madison Cawein, Esq., with hale affection of his boisterous little 
playmate — Bud Riley. August 5, 1903. 

Little Boy! Halloo! Halloo! 
Can't you hear me calling you? 
Little Boy that Used to Be, 
Come in here and play with me!" 

Cawein's copy of Riley's book inscribed by the two poets is now in the 
Collection of William F. Gable.] 

1903, September 14. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * jj- ^jn j^g delightful to have you 
here when the forests have put on all their scarlet and gold 
magnificence. * * * j am writing a little, but it seems I can get 
nothing accepted any more. I wonder if it is due to the fact that 
I am a married man now. and need more money than I did when I 
was a single man? It looks that way. * * * 

246 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

1903, October 20. 

Charles Hanson Towne: Here is a poem of some length on a 
subject which Tennyson has made famous, Mariana of Shakespeare's 
"Measure for Measure." I have worked very hard over this piece 
and tried to make it worthy of its great model. I have treated it 
differently from the manner in which Tennyson treated it; his, as you 
may remember, deals with the heat and the languor of mid-summer, 
the drought that burnt the land up and sickened Mariana's heart 
unutterably. I have dealt with a different phase of nature, rain and 
mist and fog and the sorrow of approaching autumn. I hope that 
the poem will meet with your favor and be retained for publication 
in the Smart Set. * * * [Published in Smart Set, March, 1905]. 

1903, November 25. 

James Whitcomb Riley: Gibson, R. E. Lee Gibson, of St. Louis, 
dropped in on us at 105 West Burnett yesterday and we talked a good 
deal about old "Bud Riley;" discussed his books, his pictures, the 
caricature one particularly — which my cousin Fred colored for me 
and I have had framed; — and last, not least, the beautiful poem 
written to me on my marriage, which I also have framed and hanging 
up in my study. Well, old man, we devoted a good deal of time to 
you and yours, and only wished to have you with us. If you would 
only drop in on us, even if it were only for an hour or two, how over- 
joyed it would make me. I have one of the loveliest, most charming, 
as well as talented wives, in the world, and she would make it inter- 
esting with music and talk for you as well as the rest of us. 

Gibson, at last, has severed his connection with the St. Louis 
Insane Asylum and has been made Secretary for a Mining Company, 
at a better salary. He is in a better position now to do better work, 
I think. His wife and little daughter, Elaine Cawein Gibson, are 
with him, the latter my namesake, as you will observe. 

Doctor Cottell and I wanted to run up to see you last month 
but — you know how things happen, we didn't happen to do it. Have 
you seen The Literary Guillotine? Among the other poets decapitated 
is one who bears my name. How did you come to escape? and old 
Joaquin, too? And so the whirligig of time goes on. Ever your 
affectionate friend, Madison J. Cawein. 

1903, December 30. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I want to thank you for the gift [Dante 
and his Times and many other books] which added so much to the 
joy of our Christmas. This Christmas has indeed been the happiest 

247 



Madison C aw e in 

I ever passed, and Gertrude, too, says the same. Our little home 
looked lovely, decorated with holly and mistletoe. Friends kept 
coming and going — and presents also — till the excitement of it all 
waxed fever-high. We spent the evening at the Cottells', and had a 
merry time. The Doctor was in his best mood and we had plenty of 
music as well as poetry. * * * 

1904, February 14. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j ^^^ almost too busy to write 
to you now. * * * ^ gentleman interested in books, and a 
publisher at one time, has proposed to me recently the publication 
of a uniform edition of my poems, in ten or twelve volumes superbly 
illustrated, printed and bound, he procuring the publisher bearing 
the expense; and to be sold only on subscription. * * * The MMS. 
for the first two volumes are already in his hands; the third I am 
busy on now. [After a number of unforeseen complications were 
overcome, the uniform edition appeared in 1907, in five volumes, 
entitled The Poems of Madison Cawein.] 

1904, March 30. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j f^gj ^g jf j j^^j jQg^ ^ portion of 
myself with you away, off in Mexico, and me here in Kentucky. 
* * * Great changes have come into our household. A boy was 
born to us on the night of the eighteenth. * * * We have named 
him Preston Hamilton Cawein. * * * 

1904, August 2. 

Eric Pape: * * * Accolon of Gaul I consider my best piece 
of narrative work, and when I wrote it I attempted to paint in it a 
series of sumptuous word-pictures that some great artist, some day, 
like yourself, might be pleased to give real, artistic form to. As Mr. 
Howells remarked in a review of the volume, first published in 1889, 
I often "hand my readers the pallet instead of a picture." In revising 
the poem for the Complete Edition I have, I think, corrected this to 
some extent. I know that the pictures which you are engaged upon 
for this volume will be superb; they can not help but be with such an 
artist and such a model as you tell me you have engaged. 

Mr. Howells was my first admirer and did more to encourage 
me than any other man, woman, or child in the world at the time when 
I needed encouragement most. I shall never forget it, or cease to be 
grateful to him for all the kind things he has said, innumerable times, 
about my work. * * * 

248 



A Posthumous Autobiography 
1904, November 21. 

James Whitcomb Riley: Gertrude and I are intending to drop 
in on you Sunday next at Indianapolis. She has always been very 
desirous of meeting the great Hoosier poet and we are going to take 
advantage of the meeting of the executive committee of the Western 
Association of Writers — of which I am one of the officers — on the 
twenty-seventh, to visit Indianapolis and, incidentally and very 
particularly, — your kind and genial self. We shall have to leave the 
boy, Preston, at home, not being of an age to travel and call on our 
friends as yet. We shall be at the Claypool Hotel and hope that you 
will not forget to call or let us call on your loyal self. 

Between you and me, it is not the W. A. W. that is bringing us 
to Indianapolis, but your dear old self. I am just "honing" to see you 
again and have a chat; and my wife, Gertrude, is in a somewhat similar 
state. Do not disappoint us now, for we are surely coming, and along 
with us a lot of greetings from many of your friends in Louisville. 
Your old friend, Madison J. Cawein. 

P. S. Under separate envelope I send you a picture of both the 
wife and the boy. It was taken some five months ago and does not do 
either one of them justice. Both are far better looking than the 
photograph presents them. You will be able to judge of this in the 
case of the former on Sunday next. M. J. C. 



1904, December i. ^ 

James Whitcomb Riley: Gertrude and I are still talking about 
the good time we had in Indianapolis and about your kindness and 
Mrs. Holstein's. That is a trip which neither of us will ever forget, 
and to commemorate it, now come your two lovely souvenirs — 
the portrait of your poetical self and the volume of Out to Old Aunt 
Mary's. The portrait is the best I have ever seen of you. It is fine. 
And we are gladder than glad to have it to place in our library. The 
book, with its beautiful illustrations, is one of the loveliest things 
I ever handled; and the poem — what can I say of the poem with 
its additional stanzas? It is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, truly. 
The old-fashioned sort of a truly American idyl, such as goes right to 
the heart and, like the face of Christ on the napkin, is stamped there 
forever. 

You have no idea how much pleasure this book,with its beautiful 
drawings and more beautiful stanzas, has given to us. There is not 
a page, not a line that we have not read and re-read and lingered over 
and loved. You are certainly the poet of this generation whose work 
shall never grow stale even in the generations to come. * * * 

249 



Madison C aw e in 

1905, August 27. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: After more than a year, at last a letter [from 
Mexico] from you. But I am not going to fuss at you now that you 
have written. I am sorry, very sorry to hear of your wanderings, 
your trials, your disappointments. I hope that they will soon cease 
and that you will be your own old self again. Why don't you come 
up to Louisville for a few days and give us all a chance at you? Come 
up, and now while the weather is lovely we can go for long jaunts in 
the woods and talk it all over. I have had my disappointments, too. 
The books [the uniform edition in ten volumes] that were to appear 
with so much elegance and distinction have not appeared. The man 
who was to undertake their publication * * * promises to take up 
the work again * * * but I have little hope of seeing the magnificent 
edition. * * * 

I have published a volume of new poems [The Vale of Tempe] 
which will be out on September first. This book contains some of my 
very best work, I think. I expect great things from it — not in the 
way of money — that is a hopeless hope for any modern poet, I 
think — but from the literary magazines, men and journals. * * * 

1905, September 5. 

John Wilson Townsend: I will answer your questions as briefly 
as possible. * * * i wrote verse when attending high school; 
used to read it from the chapel rostrum. Wrote all my declamations 
in verse, every bit of which was destroyed afterwards. Wrote enough 
while at school to fill two large volumes; destroyed two-thirds of it 
after selecting my first volume. Blooms of the Berry, from the mass. 
* * * I have in hand a volume of prose and verse entitled 
"Vagabond Papers" [Nature Notes and Impressions] which will 
appear some time next year. * * * My favorite poem is "The 
Twilight Moth." * * * Poetry I define as the metrical or rhyth- 
mical expression of the emotions, occasioned by the sight or the knowl- 
edge of the beautiful and the noble in ourselves. I was christened 
in the German Lutheran Church, but am a member of no church. 
[The "German Lutheran Church" referred to by Mr. Cawein is the 
St. Paul's Evangelical Church of Louisville. Its Book of Baptismal 
Records, then written in German, contains the following entry, here 
quoted in full: "A. D., 1865: On the 23rd of April, in the evening at 
5 o'clock, there was born unto William Cawein and his wife, Christiana, 
nee Stelsly, a son; and on the 22nd of June of the same year he was 
baptized, whereupon he received the name Madison Julius; the 
sponsor was Julie Cawein, the pastor Carl Ludwig Daubert." Ac- 
cording to the Family Bible and other records, Cawein was born on 

250 



A Posthumous Auto biography 

the 23rd of March — not on the 23rd of April as recorded in this church 
book. He was baptized on his mother's birthday — the day she was 
twenty-six years old. "Julie" Cawein, the sponsor, was Mrs. Julia 
Stelsly Cawein, wife of Daniel Cawein. He was called Madison in 
honor of President James Madison. In 1855, when Cawein's parents 
were married, the Reverend Daubert otificiated at the wedding.] 



1905, September ii. 

Mrs. Richard W. Knott: I was greatly pleased to learn from 
your letter that you had noted an advance in my art — over that of 
my preceding books — in this my latest volume, The Vale of Tempe. 

The editorial notice in last Saturday's Louisville Evening Post 
which, I suppose, was of your writing, pleased me very much also. 
It is such words as yours and your husband's that stimulate and 
encourage one, like myself, who finds so little to encourage in the 
attitude of the newspapers towards modern poetry. * * * 



1905, October 4. 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich: You have my deepest sympathy. I 
had not heard of your recent loss. Words are feeble to express what 
one would say — such an affliction makes all language worthless. If 
we were to lose our little boy — who is now nearly nineteen months 
old — I would not care to live any longer. Your loss makes my heart 
sore. But, as a friend of mine, a great physician here said to me 
once — "the wonder is not that we do not die, but that we live as 
long as we do." 

I was pleased to hear that you liked some of the poems in my 
last volume, and thank you for your kind words of praise. * * * 
Very sincerely yours, Madison Cawein. 



1905, October 25. 

James Whitcomb Riley: I suppose that you are back of the 
beautiful notice of my last volume. The Vale of Tempe, in the Novem- 
ber number of The Reader. If you are not, you probably know 
who wrote it and can hand this letter of thanks over to the editor to 
be delivered to the man, or maid, who is so kindly disposed toward 
my last efforts. I was particularly pleased to note the poems in the 
volume which appealed to this generous reviewer — the troubadour 
poems and "Mariana." I spent a great deal of time over, and gave 
more pains to, those poems than, I believe, I gave to any of the rest. 

251 



Madison C aw e in 

They are, therefore, more dear to me, perhaps, than any of the 
others. Perhaps, I say. Although the EngUsh poets seem to 
prefer others, Arthur Symons, from whom I have lately heard, liking 
"The Old Herb Man" and "The Wood Water;" and Andrew Lang, 
the poems in the forepart of the volume and the Fairy pieces. 
Arthur Symons writes me beautifully from Cornwall, and Andrew 
Lang from Inverary, Scotland. Both of them speak highly of the 
book, and both of them are good critics. 

Gertrude — who sends you her love and best wishes — and I 
start for the East Monday. We go to Washington, New York, 
Philadelphia and Boston and expect to be away a month. We leave 
our little boy, Preston Hamilton, with his grandparents at home. 
You should see him now! He is her living image and just as bright 
and charming as his mother is. If you saw him you would not write 
a poem to him, oh no! but you would dedicate a whole volume of 
children poems to him. Your old friend, Madison Cawein. 

1905, November 5, Philadelphia. 

Dr. Henry A. Cottell: Well, veni, vidi, vici; we came, we saw, 
we — have done things, not literary, but social. The President is a 
wonderful man. He took powerful possession of us and simply in- 
sisted on our staying over a day in Washington to meet his wife and 
to take lunch with him. The Attorney General of the United States, 
the Assistant Secretary of State, and the new Minister to Ecuador 
were also present, besides two or three others whose names I forget. 
The President talked of poetry eloquently and quoted it profusely. 
He quoted from my poem "Noera," to be found in Poems of Nature 
and Love, a poem which, he says, has been a favorite of his wife and 
himself for years, ever since his wife cut it from a paper and placed 
it in her scrap book; she, Mrs. Roosevelt, told us they read it over, 
or quoted from it every autumn, she and the President liked it so. 
The President also likes "Indian Summer" very much and quoted 
with much gusto the first lines of that poem — "The dawn is a warp 
of fever," etc. It is one of your favorites, too, I believe. All in all, 
our stay in Washington was beautiful. The young Secretary of the 
Mexican Embassy, Don Jose Castellott, gave us a dinner and took us 
for a long drive around the beautiful suburbs of Washington. He is 
a poet in his own country, Mexico, and is now writing a play in verse. 
He is already the author of a successful play that ran for 40 nights in 
the City of Mexico, and also of a novel. He is only 25 years of age. 

In Philadelphia we have met with an equally delightful social 
and literary time. Harrison S. Morris, the finest poet in the East, 
and formerly editor of Lippincott's Magazine, now head of the Art 
Department of the Curtis Publishing Company, they pubHsh the 
Ladies Home Journal, you know. 

252 



A P osthumous Autobiography 

Harrison Morris took me to lunch at the Authors' Club where I 
met a number of publishers, editors and novelists — no poets, how- 
ever, as there are but two here, Harrison S. Morris and Doctor Weir 
Mitchell, author of Hugh Wynne. We called afterward on Doctor 
Weir Mitchell who greeted us beautifully. He is a great man, one 
of the greatest in the country, both as a literary man and a physician. 
He showed us the MS. of a new book of poems just completed and 
made me a present of his latest volume, Complete Poems, just pub- 
lished in England. Read his last poem in the November Century. 
Gertrude and I then left with Mr. Morris for his home at Oaklane, 
seven or eight miles from Philadelphia, and yet in the city though all 
is country, magnificent country, around it. He has a beautiful home, 
a lovely wife, a perfectly sweet and beautiful little girl six years old. 
He married the daughter of Joseph Wharton, who is a multi-million- 
aire. Their homes and grounds show it. Clipped yews and cypresses, 
lakes, willowed and beeched, and showing here and there an Italian 
statue in the foliage, queer busts on strange pedestals. Mr, Wharton 
is a remarkable man, not only in finance, but in his love and appre- 
ciation of literature, poetry particularly, all of which, it seems, he 
has read. We were his guests yesterday and dined with him in 
magnificent state. He simply fell in love with Gertrude, as also did 
the President, at both of whom, I think, she made eyes. She is a 
beautiful girl and they are men of taste. I am proud of her. She 
looks fine. 

Mr. Wharton is related to Edith Wharton, the novelist; also 
very closely to the Wisters who all live here. Owen Wister, the author 
of The Virginian, is one of the family. We saw his wife, a lovely 
little woman, still very young. Joseph Wharton is eighty years old 
and is still active in business in spite of all his millions — he is in the 
steel manufacturing business ; his plant in New Jersey competes with 
Carnegie's. He has met and known the greatest men in our literature ; 
been intimate with Emerson, Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier and 
Holmes, of whom he tells, charmingly, many anecdotes. He took 
us for a long, long ride yesterday in his magnificent equipage through 
this noble and beautiful landscape, so dotted with palatial homes. 
For hours we drove along the Wissihickon, clipped and wooded, in 
all its autumn glory, and showing here and there a ruined mill or 
bridge near sombre forest of hemlock. 

It all seems so unreal. Both Gertrude and myself are in a sort 
of daze over it all — the grandeur, the wealth and the honor. I fear 
we will wake up and find it all a dream and ourselves back at home 
in humdrum quarters on Burnett Avenue. 

Love to all. Gertrude sends love to you, your wife and the rest. 
Remember us to Miss Anna Blanche McGill and Miss Josephine 
McGill, please, and also to Miss Kate Minett and Miss Emma 
Grififith. Madison Cawein. 

253 



Madison C aw e in 
1905, November 20, New York. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: It has been one continuous round of dinners, 
luncheons and receptions since we returned to New York from Boston. 
We were at Richard Watson Gilder's last Friday for dinner; after 
dinner the people poured in — poets especially. John Burroughs, the 
gray naturalist and poet, was there, and he and I had a long- and 
pleasant talk; William Vaughan Moody, the poet, who, so many 
say is our greatest writer, and Edward Arlington Robinson, whom the 
President praised in the Outlook, were also there. So were Ridgely 
Torrence and Hamlin Garland, and many others I do not recall 
this moment. 

At Orison S. Marden's, editor of Success, and at Robert Under- 
wood Johnson's, one of the Century editors, we met the great 
Markham, Edwin of "The Man with the Hoe." He is a noble looking 
man and he took to me and I to him. He was most warm and cordial 
in his praise and talk of my poems. We also met that queer poet of 
funny things, now so much in vogue, Wallace Irwin. 

We called on Frank Dempster Sherman, also on Professor W. T. 
Trent. Clinton Scollard called on us yesterday, and so did Ridgely 
Torrence. I saw Richard Le Gallienne at his apartment, and liked 
him very much; with his great mop of hair and thin, pale, smooth 
face he looks the poet more than any of them I met. We have seen 
a great deal of Bliss Carman. He is the same good fellow I met ten 
years ago. 

In Boston we met a number of literary folks, including John 
Townsend Trowbridge, Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson and 
Josephine Preston Peabody. We had a most enjoyable time. I am 
sorry we could not see Thomas Bailey Aldrich; he had not returned 
from the country. * * * 



1905, November 20, New York. 

Preston H. Cawein [aged twenty months]: My darling little 
Kitsie: Dada is coming home. He will be home Wednesday night 
at 8 o'clock and be glad of it because he will see his dear little Kitsie 
again. He is bringing a lot of toys along with him for his sweet 
little boy, and among them is a choo-choo which was bought especially 
for him in New York. It is the kind of a choo-choo that little boys 
usually travel on when they go to Fairyland. Tell Grandma that 
Mama has stayed on in New York for several weeks longer to take 
vocal lessons from Mr. Victor Harris * * * until the 8th of 
December. Kiss Grandma and Grandpa for Mama and Dada. 
Your loving Dada, Madison. 

254 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

1905, December 5. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * jyjy books, the ten-volume edition, 
still hang fire. * * * j g^^ ^^le artists in the East: Eric Pape in 
Boston, and Orson Lowell, B. West Clinedinst and Thure de Thulstrup 
in New York. * * * The pictures that are finished are master- 
pieces. I hope that the agent will see his way clear to go on with the 
work now. [Shortly after this the agent then promoting the proposed 
ten volumes withdrew, and in the edition eventually printed, no illus- 
trations except those by Eric Pape were used.] 

1906, February 27. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Mr. Doerr's death was a great 
shock to us. [He was brought to Louisville from Colorado Springs on 
February 10, with very little hope of his recovery]. * * * He was 
a strong man, a good, a noble man, not old, and he had to go. Mother 
[Mrs. Doerr], was in Florida and arrived in Louisville early the Sunday 
morning on which he died, and he had been dead only an hour or so 
when she reached his bedside. I had to break the news to her and 
my sister. * * * Such grief, such horror! God grant that I may 
never have such news to break to loving hearts again in my life. I, 
too, was and still am all unstrung. * * * 

1906, April 22. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j have not yet gotten over the 
San Francisco horror [earthquake April 18, 1906]. It affects me 
financially, as I have nearly all my money in stock in the City Railway 
out there. * * * 



1906, May 15. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: You should be in Kentucky now to roam the 
May-time hills with me. Nowhere in the world, I am sure, can there 
be anything lovelier and balmier than are our weather and our woods 
here in old Kentucky. * * * 

I have been corresponding with my friend, Yone Noguchi, Tokyo, 
Japan, the Japanese poet. He is publishing a volume of new poems 
in Tokyo, and a month or two ago wrote me requesting that I write 
an introduction for it, though I have never done such a thing before. 
He is full of enthusiasm and has taken to publishing my poems — from 

255 



Madison Cawein 

various volumes of mine he has — in a quarterly magazine he and 
several other Japanese poets are getting out in Tokyo. He promises 
me a copy of the paper when it is published. * * * 

I am correcting the proofs of my new book, Nature Notes and 
Impressions, which are coming in slowly. The prose and poetry in 
it show up pretty well, and, for the main part, stand the test of all 
tests — the reading in cold type. * * * 

1906, August 7. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * My Nature Notes and Impressions 
will be out the last of this week. I am as anxious to see this book as 
a child is to see a new toy. There are things in it so intimately near to 
my heart that in some ways I feel the book is more mine than any I 
have ever written. * * * 

1906, August 18. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j ^-i^i^k Nature Notes and 
Impressions is a very pretty looking book, in its make-up, but am more 
and more uncertain about its contents — whether I did right in 
publishing the stuff. Some of the prose and some of the verse, I am 
sure, is good. But then the work is, I fear, too fragmentary, and the 
subjects often too amateurish, the treatment too much that of an 
apprentice. I am sorry now that I did not wait until after my death 
and leave the book to be published by my literary executors. Write 
me your candid opinion about it. Be critical. * * * 

I think that the gift of poetry is entirely gone from me. I write 
no more and have no more inclination to write. I think I am 
determined to give up the ungrateful task altogether. I shall get out 
my complete edition and cry quits to the muse. I am not joking; I 
am serious about it. Song is gone from me. * * * 

1906, August 26. 

Mrs. Richard W. Knott: I was greatly pleased to see your 
appreciative editorial of my last book in the Louisville Evening Post 
yesterday. Also to receive your note of a few days ago regarding the 
book. When I undertook the arrangement and publication of these 
Nature Notes I did not know but that I was making a mistake. It 
seemed to me to be an experiment more or less doubtful. All frag- 
mentary work is less sure of succeeding than is a work welded into 
a complete whole. But this work of mine had virtually written 
itself. And I am glad to know now that I was not so far wrong about 
its proving of some interest to certain lovers of nature like yourself. 
In that it has served its purpose. * * * 

256 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

1906, September 8. 

James Whitcomb Riley: I have somewhat impatiently waited 
a word from you regarding my last volume, Nature Notes, sent to you 
early last month. Is anything the matter? Are you ill? The 
reason I ask is I find your picture fallen from the wall beside my 
desk this morning on coming into my study. No reason why it 
should be lying on its face in front of my desk, when its original, I 
hope, is still standing upright and whole in God's free air and sunlight 
where he shall continue to stand for many more goodly years. Your 
old friend, Madison Cawein. 

1906, October 28. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j ggn^j ^ copy of this month's 
South Atlantic Quarterly containing an article by Anna Blanche 
McGill on my poetry. I think that you will like this article. It is 
the finest and the ablest, I think, ever written about my work. It 
does not cover the entire field of my production however ; the narrative 
and dramatic poems are merely mentioned. It seems that no one 
cares for those things in my poetry which I care most for — "Accolon 
of Gaul," "An Old Tale Retold," "Gloramone," "Lyanna," "The 
Lady of Verne" etc., etc. I wonder why? Are they not worthy of 
consideration? Do you think so? * * * 

1906, November 12. 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich: Some weeks ago came your pleasant 
letter regarding my Nature Notes, and Saturday your beautiful play 
Judith of Bethulia. I do not know how to begin to tell you what 
pleasure I have been getting out of the reading of this really great 
play; so full of the glamour of old poetry and passion. The second 
act contains some of the finest passages you have ever written, and 
throughout the work you show that simplicity of style, that sumptuous 
diction, direct and poetic, full of fine metaphor as well as music, that 
have characterized all your work. I had read many years ago your 
poem "Judith;" afterward the elaborated "Judith," — both of which 
are exceedingly fine, but I was not prepared for the dramatic intensity 
of your play Judith by them, although I should have been, it is true, 
as they, too, are intensely dramatic, but in a different way. 

I note what The New York Times has to say of you and your 
poetry in the last number and heartily endorse all it says. What a 
really magnificent sonnet that one is that is quoted. But you have 
written so many magnificent ones when one comes to count them up. 
Very sincerely yours, Madison Cawein. 

257 



Madison C aw e in 

1906, December 9. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j ^j^ feeling wretched this morning 
after a banquet last night at the Gait House given to Henry Watterson 
who is leaving for Europe. Some 350 men attended. Speeches were 
made, among them one by Riley who wrote and read an original poem 
for the occasion. I was with Riley and W. C. Bobbs the better part 
of yesterday, and shall be with them again today. * * * 

1907, January 19. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * The two letters [on the death of 
Mrs. Gibson] from Thomas Bailey Aldrich and his wife are beautiful 
and should console you more than anything in the world. He is 
unquestionably our greatest living poet. Nothing academic about 
him as there is about nearly all the other poets writing in the East. 

George E. Woodberry is about the worst [the most academic]; 
although Van Dyke and a Chicago critic on The Dial by the name of 
Payne, give the first place in American poetry [living poets] to William 
Vaughn Moody and Woodberry. This seems ridiculous to me, when 
Aldrich is still living. 

You never know what is going to happen when you make a change. 
Probably, had you never gone to Mexico your wife would still be 
living. But who knows? We are in God's hands. He makes or 
unmakes us. As I grow older the world seems to grow sadder — not 
the world, but life, I suppose. Partings must come to us all, and I 
dread the day when any one of my loved ones has to leave me or 
I, them. * * * 

1907, February 28, New York. 

R. E. Lee Gibson : Here we are in New York once more among 
the poets and amusements. We are having quite a strenuous 
time of it. Gertrude and I attended the National Arts Club banquet 
last night, given on the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of 
Longfellow. Quite a crowd of poets was there. Fully three hun- 
dred people participated and enjoyed the exercises. Cale Young 
Rice, Robert Burns Wilson, James Lane Allen and I represented 
Kentucky. All the poets you ever heard of and now living in this 
country were present— all except Thomas Bailey Aldrich and William 
Dean Howells, both of whom are ill. 

Bliss Carman, William Vaughn Moody, Ridgely Torrence and 
Edwin Markham all looked very familiar to me. Moody, it is said, 
has made a great deal of money out of his play. The Great Divide, 

258 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

the best play of the season. He and Torrence are going to the wilds 
of Africa next week, for new inspiration, I suppose. * * * Torrence 
has out a new play, Abelard and Heloise, a copy of which he has kindly 
presented to me. Dr. Henry Van Dyke and George E. Woodberry 
are two good poets we enjoyed meeting. Florence Earle Coates and 
Edith M. Thomas pleased us. A most interesting man was Moncure 
D. Conway. We also met Carolyn Wells, and the Lord only knows 
whom else. If I stopped and tried to tell you about all the poets here 
I would not get through before night. * * * 

1907, March 7, New York. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: We return to Louisville tomorrow and will 
be glad to be home again after a most strenuous two weeks. * * * 
Called on Mr. Howells and had a charming chat. * * * ^^ Miss 
Jessie B. Rittenhouse's we met Gertrude Hall, Anna Hempstead 
Branch, Florence Wilkinson and several others. * * * There 
certainly was a crowd and crush of novelists and poets in the city. 
The New York editors do not have to depart outside their own city 
for material sufficient to keep their magazines going from one year's 
end to the other. The tribe of writers here is legion. I never saw 
so many, and never in my life was so tired of meeting them. * * * 

1907, March 12. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Looking back over our trip to the East, I 
can not say that I enjoyed myself greatly. I was glad to get home 
again from all the insincerity and artificiality of that great metro- 
politan life. It is true we met all the great poets there, except one 
or two, but the one who pleased me most and seemed the most whole- 
some was Edwin Markham. He is a rough diamond and brimming 
over with enthusiasm for his work, and incidentally mine also. Most 
of the other poets did not seem to care much about poetry — was it 
merely an affectation? — and did not strike me as being occupied with 
their art to the exclusion of everything else. But Markham did. 
We met him and his wife two or three times. Richard Watson Gilder 
and Robert Underwood Johnson, too, are men and poets whom we 
saw much of and liked greatly. But, as I said, we are glad to be home 
again. * * * 

1907, March 21. 

Mrs. Thomas Bailey Aldrich: The death of Mr. Aldrich has 
been a great shock to me. I wish to extend to you the sympathy of 
myself and Mrs. Cawein. So kind, so considerate, so great. I can 

259 



Madison C aw e in 

never forget the reception I received one Easter Sunday from Mr. 
Aldrich and yourself. Never can I forget his words of kindly en- 
couragement to me on frequent occasions. My heart goes out to 
you in this your bereavement as does the heart of every poet and 
lover of poetry in the land; for the loss is not only yours but is that 
of the entire country. Very truly yours, Madison Cawein. 



1907, March 24. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I'll take pleasure in reading your last letter 
to my mother — but mother, as you probably know — is almost an 
invalid now — never gives seances any more, never clairvoyants. 
Since the sudden shock of Mr. Doerr's death she has been bordering 
on nervous prostration. She is always ailing, never well. It worries 
us no little to see her in this condition. But I will speak to her of 
your desire in regard to your wife, who, I am certain, is near you and 
your little girl often and often, and her influence is disseminated 
around you to help, to relieve, to comfort you; so spiritualism teaches, 
and it is true. 

Mr. Aldrich is dead. Good, true, beautiful poet. His passing 
was very lovely and in harmony with his life and his thought. His 
works remain. An array of perfect poems and several perfect stories, 
that no age and no man shall surpass. His memory will be kept 
green forever through his beautiful poems and his stories. 

I met two ladies in John P. Morton's the other day. They were 
purchasing some of my books, and the clerk must needs introduce me. 
They were from Memphis, Tennessee. In the course of conversation, 
one of them, whose name I do not remember, remarked that one of 
the lyrics that had given her the greatest pleasure was one in The 
Garden of Dreams, about a baby, she didn't remember the name, 
but she had frequently transcribed or copied it and given copies of 
it to friends, and had mailed the other lady then present, a copy of 
the poem only recently. I suggested that it might be "Baby Mary," 
the poem written about your little girl, Elaine, and she said, "Yes, 
that is its name." I thought that this little episode would interest 
you, coming as it does so unexpectedly and so appreciatively from a 
total stranger. 

We are all well. Preston recovered beautifully from his measles. 
He had a birthday last week — three years old — and I, one yesterday. 
He said to me last night — the Cottells were over to dinner and we 
spoke of you — Preston said, "Papa, where do the birthdays come 
from? and where do they go when they're gone?" Your friend^ 
Madison. 



260 



A Posthumous Autobiogr aphy 

1907, April 7. 

R. E. Lee Gibson ; * * * L^g^ December I became a member 
of the Pendennis Club, at which, you may recollect, you and Riley 
and I dined, with one or two others, several years ago. It is the first 
club in Kentucky, and I thought it behooved me to be a member of 
it, as it gives a man a certain position in a community to be a member 
of a good club. * * * 

I have written no poetry for a long, long time and do not know 
when the Muse will return again to take up her abode with me. 
My books [The Poems of Madison Cawein, in 5 volumes], however, 
are progressing. I hope to have the first volume ready for subscribers 
about the middle of May. They will be large books, each of them 
five hundred pages and over. I know I shall be severely criticised for 
retaining so much of my work in this complete edition. I have 
omitted some fifty poems and all the German translations [The 
White Snake]. * * * 

I wish you could come to Louisville this spring for a week or 
two. I should like to have a long, quiet time with you: to talk over 
things and loaf and invite our souls. I have no companionable 
spirits, souls, in this community to quietly loaf and talk with. It 
seems that as the years go by friends are harder to make, or we are 
harder to please, and one finds himself turning ever and ever to the 
old friends. Doctor Cottell is a good friend of mine, but he is too busy 
with his profession, busier than ever before, and I seldom see him 
unless I call on him. I feel at a loss for male companionship more 
and more as the years go by — that companionship of similar interests 
that makes life worth living. 

I feel that two of the authors who used to be good friends of mine, 
recently have come to envy and avoid me merely from the fact that 
I have achieved somewhat more than they have. God knows it is 
not worth envying as I see it, but they think it is, especially one of 
them, whose antipathy is very marked. I am an older man, I have 
worked longer and harder than any writer in this vicinity and have 
wrung recognition from the writers and readers of this country 
through some merit, however little, and through persistence. They 
have had the same chance as I had, and still have it; that the greatest 
writers and critics have not recognized them as they have me is not 
a fault of mine. They, in time, may accomplish more than I have and 
surely when that time comes I shall not envy them what they have 
attained. But, as I said, it seems that the more recognition I get, the 
more enemies I create. I feel this; am sure of it. Gertrude, too, feels it 
and suffers from it. She, a noble, beautiful soul is far above, spiritually 
and intellectually, all the women I have ever known and is my sole 
consolation and encouragement. She could be a writer of great 



261 



Madison C aw e in 

things if she cared to be. She and the boy are my great comforts. 
My poetry used to be everything to me, but now I have these and 
poetry is a secondary thing. This, perhaps, is as it should be. 

There is a book [Woman and Her Relations to Humanity — Boston 
— 1892] given through my mother, which communications were 
taken down by a friend of ours, a Mr. Edward Shippen, now dead, 
whose words would probably help and console you in your sorrow and 
trial. The book was published about twelve years ago in Boston and 
I am going to try to get a copy of it and send it to you. These com- 
munications, from the lips of spirits, speaking through my mother, 
will astonish you. My mother never had more than two years 
schooling in her life and the message delivered through her from these 
departed ones, cannot but fill you with wonder and convince you of 
an hereafter where your loved ones are awaiting you as well as watch- 
ing over you and your interests. If I can obtain a copy of this book 
I will mail it to you Be hopeful and believe in the happiness that 
the future has in store for you. Your friend, Madison Cawein. 



1907, April 28. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j think you will understand that 
book, given through my mother, more perfectly as you digest it more 
thoroughly. She, as well as myself, put very little faith in the 
so-called materialization of dis-embodied spirits, about which her 
book says little or nothing. I myself have seen no materialized 
spirits, and did I see such, would question their truth. But spiritual- 
ism is a truth. That the dead live and return to us is without 
question in my mind. I have spoken with too many beautiful 
departed souls to doubt that they return to comfort and to console, 
to instruct and to aid us. 

The illustrations [for the five volumes] are noble and adequate 
and have entered into the spirit of my verse as intimately as I could 
expect or desire. Eric Pape is one of the most enthusiastic admirers 
a poet could wish for, and has wrought seventeen masterpieces for 
the works. He has, in his own words, found his inspiration in my 
lines, and has adequately expressed it on canvas. * * * 

We have purchased a beautiful home in St. James Court of this 
city and shall move into it [from 105 West Burnett Avenue] on or 
before June the first. As soon as we are settled in it I expect to get 
back to poetry again. At present I feel no inclination to write any- 
thing. I hope, however, the spirit will move me again to take up 
the pen in the interest of beautiful, serious poetry. If it does not I 
shall be bitterly disappointed. * * * 

262 



A Posthumous Autobiography 
1907, May 26. 

John Wilson Townsend: * * * Your beautiful life of 
Richard Hickman Menefee is a work of great research and one that 
you may be justly proud of. For a young man it seems to me that 
you have done wonders. But you will go on doing greater things, I 
am sure. You have it in you and it will out. Unquestionably, to 
my thinking, you have done not only the memory of Menefee a 
magnificent service, but also the State of Kentucky, in writing and 
publishing this fine biography. * * * 

1907, May 26. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: What you say about Alden's report on the 
poets, to James Bryce's question as to "Who are your poets," amused 
me. Mr. Alden is an old friend of mine, but in my opinion, he is 
totally unable to give an unbiased opinion as to who are our best 
[living American] poets. Moody and Torrence and Robinson are 
all right. But what are we to say about Edith M. Thomas and 
Florence Earle Coates whom he mentions also as worthy of serious and 
great consideration? * * * Why didn't he point to Joaquin 
Miller, by far our first poet living now, or to James Whitcomb Riley? 
Burns never did any better work than has Riley done, and Burns is 
considered a poet of some considerable standing. [In his article on 
"Our American Poets," published in The Louisville Times, May 31, 
1907, and republished in this volume, Mr. Cawein presents Riley and 
Miller as the foremost living poets in America, both of whom were 
"overlooked" by the New York editors who attempted to answer 
Ambassador Bryce's question.] 

1907, May 31. 

Thomas S. Jones, Jr.: Your Jar of Fragrant Roses [The Rose- 
Jar] came to me in the midst of moving. Still I have snatched odd 
moments to di-p into it and breathe its perfume. I have to thank 
you for those moments and the pleasure I have received from the 
perfume of those roses. * * * 

1907, June 24. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Your sonnet is good. I find nothing to 
criticize in it. It strikes me as being a very characteristic sonnet and 
yet different from those you have heretofore shown to me. I find 
no fault at all with it. 

263 



Madison Cawein 

I was up to Bloomington, Indiana, last Wednesday to see Riley 
made a Doctor of Laws. He received the honor with dignity, and 
afterwards, he with Henry Watterson and myself, were the guests of 
honor at a luncheon at the University of Indiana. Riley bears his 
honors and degrees with ease. This is the fourth time that he has 
been made a doctor of something by universities of different localities. 
He was never better and never more agreeable and cordial. He 
made me return to Indianapolis with him as his guest and there I had 
to remain until I had to leave for home. He and Mrs. Holstein made 
it most pleasant for me in their beautiful home. That night we, 
Riley and I, sat up till nearly one o'clock reading Riley's new book 
[Morning]. That is Riley read to me and I listened with all my ears. 
He has some of his best work in this book; a poem in imitation of me 
which is just inimitable ["Pomona," one of Some Imitations]. You 
would think it actually mine. The book is on the press and will be 
out about September, I understand. 

He sent Preston two little books, The Tailor of Gloucester and a 
little book of "John Gilpin" and "Jovial Hunters." In each of them 
he wrote something to Preston. In the one of The Tailor of Gloucester 
this is what he wrote, which I consider very neat indeed: 

To — Master Preston Hamilton Cawein 
From his long-invisible Playmate 
James Whitcomb Riley. 

There is love of more devices 
And Romance that more entices 
Higher minds and higher prices; — 
But, for "Giggle-boy" or "Cry-sis" 
(With some snifHes interstices) 
Here's a little tale suffices — 
Sweet as oranges in slices 
Slabbed in slues o' cream and ices 
Tanged with tingling, spangling spices. 
Ho! there's no tale half so nice as 
This Old Tailor and his Mice is. 

I always look forward to the arrival of your letters. Your friend, 
as ever, Madison Cawein. 

1907, June 24. 

James Whitcomb Riley: The two little books came promptly 
to hand, and not only made the little heart of Preston H. C. [Preston 
Hamilton Cawein] leap with joy but throbbed glee into our, though 
older, not less responsive hearts. The Tailor of Gloucester, with its 

264 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

preliminary rhyme by J. W. R., is inimitable, and I have read the 
story three times to Preston and the rhyme something like twenty 
times three times. He is delighted with the Three Jovial Hunters 
also, and never tires of having it read over and over and over to him. 
Mr. Riley is a very real, visible playmate of his now; nothing 
invisible about J. W. R. He is here with him, and us, incidentally, 
and we enjoy his company vigorously and boisterously. * * * 



1907, June 29. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Our new home, No. Eighteen St. James Court, 
is a lovely one and most beautifully situated within a half a block of 
Central Park. In fact the Park is right in front of our porch; a 
fountain flows and patters and drips right before our door. It is a 
beautiful spot, surrounded by trees and shrubs and flowers. I wish 
you were here to enjoy it all with me. * * * \\^e ^re almost 
across the street from the Rices and just around the corner from the 
Cottells. * * * I hope I shall here be able to get back to my 
work again. In fact I will have to as I am miserable without it. 
I do not know what form it will take, but I know I will have to do 
something. * * * 

A few days ago I received a telegram from my friend Eric Pape, 
as follows: "Great monument at Stage Fort Park, Gloucester, Mass- 
achusetts [to celebrate] founding, in 1623, of Massachusetts Bay 
Colony. Committee ask you to write and read poem. Dedication 
about August fifteenth. Senator Lodge, orator, also Ambassador Bryce. 
You and Mrs. Cawein our guests. I am designer of monument. 
Answer collect." I wired him to write me more particulars. * * * 
In the meantime I am reading my history of Massachusetts. I can't 
say I like the job, or will do it justice if I undertake it. * * * 



1907, July 18. 

Eric Pape: * * * j have read with interest nearly all that 
you sent me regarding the Massachusetts Bay Colony. My lines 
of writing the poem ["An Ode in Commemoration of the Founding 
of the Massachussetts Bay Colony in the Year 1623"] had been laid out 
long before your pamphlets arrived. I read John Fiske's Beginnings 
of New England and one or two other histories on the subject. 
I shall generalize in the treatment of the subject. I think that is the 
better way to treat it and the only way to get any poetry into it — 
which I expect to do. I have the Ode almost finished. Mrs. Cawein 
pronounces it the best poem I have ever written. I esteem her 
judgment highly, as she is usually a very severe critic. * * * 

265 



Madison Cawein 



1907, July 27. 



R. E. Lee Gibson : I knew that the books [The Poems of Madison 
Cawein, in five volumes] would please you. Yes, they are the hand- 
somest set of verse I have seen for a long time. * * * j have 
worked hard for all that I have and it was only my determination that 
made me win through. The books are selling — slowly, but steadily. 
Nearly every day we get an order for a set. * * * Your letter to 
me is so full of kind words, too full, in fact. * * * 



1907, August 2. 

James Whitcomb Riley: I sent you yesterday a set of the com- 
plete poems which, I hope, reached you all right. The books, in the 
opinion of every one who has seen them, are the handsomest ever 
published by the Bobbs-Merrill Company, with the exception of your 
own. I hope that you will find some old favorites to enjoy in them, 
also some new poems, that, eventually, will prove favorites with you. 

I start East, to Gloucester, Cape Ann, on the tenth, to be away 
the rest of the month. Gertrude and the boy, little Preston Hamilton, 
go with me. We are to be the guests of Eric Pape, the artist, for 
several weeks. The Ode for the dedication of the monument, to be 
erected at Gloucester, is written and passed upon by certain friends 
who are supposed to be critics. Their verdict was favorable, and so 
I go untremblingly in spite of Ambassador Bryce's presence. 

Gertrude sends her regards to both yourself and Mrs. Holstein, 
to whom, pray, please remember me. Your friend always, Madison 
Cawein. 



1907, August 3. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I found much pleasure in the reading of your 
last letter. I am afraid that the public will never come to regard 
my poetry as they finally came to regard the poetry of Keats and 
Tennyson. I may have a few poems in my Collected Poems that 
may be as good as any these two poets ever wrote, but the great 
majority of my work falls far below the average work of these. But 
it is good to have you write me as you do, placing me by the side of the 
elect. It cheers me up and encourages me to hope for better things 
in the future. * * * Every one is carried away with the beauty 
of the pictures [seventeen photogravures after paintings by Eric Pape] 
and the appearance of the books. These two things have sold more 
sets than the merit of the poems ever could. They are good recom- 
mendations. * * * 

266 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

1907, August 18, Annisquam, Massachusetts. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * We left Louisville on the ninth and 
are now the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Eric Pape. * * * On the fifteenth 
I read my Ode at the dedication of the monument. [The tablet and 
the bas-relief around it were designed by Mr. Pape.] It was a great 
event. Ere this you have doubtless received the Gloucester and 
Boston papers I sent to you. You will observe that some of the 
persons expected [one was President Roosevelt] were not present. 

I have been out viewing the landscape; it is wild and rugged and 
beautiful. Mr. Pape has a steam launch and we are out in it a great 
deal. We are enjoying ourselves very much. * * * Preston 
never looked finer than he does now. He has a little playmate, 
Moritz Pape [son of Mr. and Mrs. Eric Pape], a little boy about his 
own age. * * * 

1907, August 25, Annisquam, Massachusetts. 

Theodore Roosevelt: My dear President Roosevelt: I write 
to thank you for your good letter of last week. It gave me great 
pleasure to learn that I had quoted from two of your favorite poems 
in autographing the volumes. [The Poems of Madison Cawein.] 

Yes, I am of German parentage My father came to America 
in the early forties from a little town in Bavaria, the Rhine Palatinate. 
The family, however, originally came from France, descended from a 
Huguenot, a certain Jean de Herancour, who left Paris on the revoca- 
tion of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. My mother's parents came to 
America in the thirties from Swabia ; so you see, she is entirely of German 
extraction. She is still living in Louisville, Kentucky, where she was 
born, as also were all her children. 

Mr. Pape came of German parents, as do I, and is very proud of 
the fact. I never would have bothered you with all this rigmarole 
had you not asked me in your letter about my parents. Mrs. Cawein 
asks to be remembered to you, and, with kind regards, to Mrs. 
Roosevelt. Most sincerely yours, Madison Cawein. 

1907, August 29, Annisquam, Massachusetts. 

James Whitcomb Riley: * * * Here is something that will 
interest you I think. Mr. John Hays Hammond, the man who 
opened up South Africa for Cecil Rhodes, one of Rhodes' most intimate 
friends, a splendid man, in spite of his millions, resides near this 
place ["The Highlands"] between Gloucester and Annisquam. His 
estate is the most magnificent on the North Coast. He gave a 

267 



Madison C aw e in 

dinner last night in my honor. The ambassador of Russia, Baron 
Rosen, and his daughter, a beautiful young girl, were present, as well 
as the Harrimans, Mrs. Harriman and two daughters, wife and 
children of the great Mr. Harriman. This all as preliminary. Mr. 
Hammond asked me to come with him into his study. I had ques- 
tioned him about Rudyard Kipling with whom he is most intimate, 
and whom he had visited often and seen often at Cecil Rhodes' home 
in South Africa. On the walls of the study hung many photographs, 
autographed, all of celebrities of the world, literary and political, 
among them two long poems written to Mr. Hammond by Rudyard 
Kipling; one of some fifteen four line stanzas that I enjoyed greatly. 
It is in Kipling's best political style, and I wished you were there to 
read it with me. It has never been published. Mr. Hammond 
pleased me greatly by asking me for a hand-written copy of my Ode 
to be framed and hung by the side of Kipling's two poems. * * * 

1907, September 12. 

Eric Pape: Back we are again and all is serene. I want to 
thank you and Mrs. Pape very much for the beautiful summer we have 
had. I don't know when I ever passed a more delightful time and 
met more delightful people. It all seems like a dream somehow, now 
that we are away from it in far-off Kentucky. I often get to wonder- 
ing whether the realities we call real are things that do actually 
exist. They become so vague, undefined, when we are away from 
them. I think often of the Old Day House — the one you intend 
making a studio of — with all its interesting contents. * * * 

1907, September 15. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Xhe trip East did all of us a great 
deal of good. We are glad to get back to our own home, however, in 
spite of the great kindness and consideration of our friends, the Papes. 
* * * Mr. Pape is a fine fellow, and his wife is a beautiful as well 
as a noble woman. * * * Somehow I feel as if my life-work were 
ended and that there is no use trying to do anything more. I can 
not do anything as good as that which I have already done, and there 
is no use in going on and doing inferior work. * * * 

1907, September 28. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * You must not delay your visit 
to us too long. I am summoned to serve on the jury in the United 
States Court, beginning October fifteenth. I hope you will be able to 

268 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

get here the week before or earlier. * * * j promise you a quiet 
time. We can talk and take long walks in the woods and read and 
discuss poetry, and see a few friends like the Cottells and Anna 
Blanche and Josephine McGill. * * * 

1907, October 2. 

John Wilson Townsend .- * * * Your Kentuckians in History 
and Literature came to me a few days ago. Thank you for your 
kindness and for the able article on my work which it contains. 
I read with much interest the article on Thomas H. Chivers. It is 
curious and interesting. The book, as a whole, is a very creditable 
one — one, I am sure, you will hear more about. I hope that it will 
bring you fame as well as money. * * * 

1907, October 20. 

James Whitcomb Riley: Morning, dewy and fresh as a wild 
rose, broke upon my reverie the other day and I have been breathing 
its fragrance and its wild-bird music ever since. This is surely, as 
I told you before when in Indianapolis, one of your best volumes and 
ranks back with The Old Fishing Hole, Afterwhiles and Green Fields 
and Running Brooks. You have recovered your early strength and 
are forging ahead again. One or two of the poems are among your 
very highest achievement — to name one of them merely is sufficient, 
"We Must Get Home," full of some of the very finest nature work, 
imagery, metaphor, what you will, that any poem written in the past 
half century by a master of poetry can show. 

You are to be doubly congratulated upon the fineness of this 
book, with its great title and its great poetry. Titles usually mean 
something and are hard things — I mean good titles — to discover. 
You have discovered one of the very best in the whole field of titles. 
This book is surely beautiful as the title of it signifies, and I hope that 
the critics will recognize its quality and give it as rousing a reception 
as we barefooted kids used to give the morning of the summer day 
when we were to have a great picnic out at Wet Woods. 

With greetings from Mrs. Cawein and a twittering cheer from 
Master Preston Hamilton Cawein, believe me, your friend always, 
Madison Cawein. 

1907, October 20. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Stocks still continue to go down, 
and I am still pegging away on the Federal Jury [9:30 A. M. to 5 P.M.]. 
It keeps me confined. I hope that this will be the last week of it, as 
I want to enjoy the wonderful October weather. * * * 

269 



Madison C aw e i n 

I continue with my child poems, and Preston teases me to death 
to read them to him. He is very much interested; more so than I 
thought a child his age [three and one half years] could ever be. But 
these poems do suit him and I have to read and re-read them to him, 
and each new one I write over and over again. * * * 



1907, October 27. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j -y^igj^ yQ^ ^ere here now to see 
the glory of the woods. Autumn never was more gorgeous. I am 
out in the woods every day. I should like to take my tent and camp 
there on the hills. * * * j ^^^^ have about thirty-eight poems 
for my child book [The Giant and the Star]. * * * They are all 
more or less comical; so they strike me, others may consider them 
sad stuff. * * * 



1907, November 14. 

Hubert Gibson Shearin : In answer to your letters and questions 
received yesterday, I will endeavor to give brief but satisfactory 
answers. [Many of the facts given in this letter appear in Mr. 
Shearin's article on Madison Cawein in Library of Southern Literature, 
published in 1908.] 

I was born in Louisville, Kentucky, March 23, 1865. My 
father came from Germany, the Rhine Palatinate, in the early part 
of the last century. His name was William Cawein. He was 
descended from a family of Huguenots, whose head was a nobleman 
named Jean de Herancour, who at the Revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes in 1685 left Paris, France, with his entire family and settled 
with them at Miihlhofen in the Palatinate of the Rhine. 

On my mother's side my grandfather was a German ofificer of 
cavalry under Napoleon Bonaparte. But after Napoleon's defeat 
and downfall, he left Germany with his wife and came to this country 
where he settled first in Ohio, then in Indiana and finally in Kentucky — 
at Louisville, where my mother was born and afterwards met and 
married my father. My mother's maiden name was Christiana 
Stelsley. They had five children. 

As a child, at the age of seven, I think, I was taken to the country 
by my parents together with my three brothers and a sister. There 
we lived in Oldham County, Kentucky, for over a year. Afterwards 
we moved to Indiana — back of New Albany among the hills — on 
what is called the Knobs. Here I formed my great love for nature. 
For nearly three years we lived there in a small farmhouse on the top 
of a hill, surrounded by wooded hills and orchards, meadows and 

270 



A P osthumous Autobiography 

cornlands. If ever a boy and his brothers and sister were happy 
they were happy there. We walked to New Albany to school, a 
district school, every school-day from fall to spring, a distance of 
two and a half miles, but we enjoyed it. At least I know I did. I 
used to love to walk along by myself making up wonderful stories of 
pirate treasures and remarkable adventures which I continued from 
day to day in my imagination. It was a serial usually that I could 
continue unendingly — and which was dependent upon no publisher 
for future installments. 

After we returned to Louisville, I attended the public schools in 
that city, and in 1881, aged sixteen, entered the Male High School. 
Before I entered and during the time I remained in the High School 
I was very fond of reading what would be called now, I suppose, dime 
novels — tales of wild adventure in the West and elsewhere as set 
down in magazines and weekly papers for boys. At the age of six- 
teen, however, tales of chivalry began to attract my attention and 
all that I could get hold of I devoured with avidity. It was at this 
time that I secured and read Spenser's "Fairie Queene," and liked 
it so well that I wrote to the publishers to find out if the other books 
of that great poem were securable. I received a courteous reply to 
the contrary telling me that Spenser died before the completion of 
the poem. So, liking the poem very much and being disappointed in 
its continuation, I sat down and read it through a second time and 
liked it better than I had the first time. As I advanced at High 
School my tastes in literature underwent a change under the direc- 
torship of one of my most noteworthy teachers. Prof. Reuben Post 
Halleck, now principal of the Boys' High School. I got to reading 
Sir Walter Scott and committed entire cantos of "Marmion" and 
"The Lady of the Lake" to memory and recited them from the rostrum 
in the chapel of the school — as it was there usually that we declaimed. 
I had commenced writing verse by this time, the age of seventeen or 
eighteen, and was encouraged to recite the same by Prof. Halleck of 
English and Elocution. I cannot tell how many pieces I wrote in 
verse to declaim. Not one remains. They were usually of a high 
and mighty manner, bombastic to a degree, and not to mention that 
they were imitative of the masters — Shelley, Scott, Goldsmith and 
Tennyson, mainly. I used to burn the midnight oil in my teens 
writing long narrative poems modeled on first one and then the other; 
I remember one in the manner of "Christabel" and another in the 
manner of "The Ancient Mariner" that I wrote sitting up until two 
or three o'clock in the morning to finish, one or two thousand lines 
in length. Byron I never cared for greatly; but I did for Keats — 
particularly the poems of "St. Agnes Eve" and "Hyperion." But 
miy poor accomplishments as compared with their great ones filled 
me with despair very frequently. And when I secured and read, or 
tried to read, Shelley, I gave up in absolute despair and determined 

271 



Madison C aw e in 

to write no more. Where was the use, I argued, seeing that a mere 
boy Hke Shelley had produced a masterpiece at the age of eighteen — 
his "Queen Mab." But, nevertherless, I went on writing and 
despairing at intervals; sending my verses away to the magazines and 
receiving them back again as promptly as I sent them, until the day 
of my graduation. I graduated in 1886, aged twenty-one, and wrote 
and read the class poem on that occasion. 

I should have liked to have gone to some college, Harvard or 
Yale, after graduating; and seriously thought of entering the Navy, 
going to Annapolis at one time, or to West Point. We were poor and 
I had to do something. My brother, the oldest, John D. Cawein, 
had secured a position for himself in a pool-room "The Newmarket," 
in Louisville, on Third Avenue, and he took me in with him as his 
assistant. Here I toiled for nearly eight years, in a most uncongenial, 
unsympathetic atmosphere of tobacco smoke, auctioneering and 
betting. With my first savings I published my first book, Blooms 
of the Berry, which Mr. Howells reviewed so favorably in Harper's 
Magazine. As I had to remain until nine and often after eleven 
o'clock at night in the pool-room, I used to read to while the time 
away, between the occasional cashing of winning tickets presented 
at the cashier's window. Here I read at odd times, keeping up my 
favorite studies, Ovid and Heine, and even translated into rhyme 
some of the latter. Here I also read many of the English classics. 

I was always, at school, keenly interested in science and kept it 
up to some extent after I had graduated; but with my confinement in 
the pool-room you can imagine how much time I now had to devote 
to its study. Outdoor life, walking in the woods and studying animals 
and insects, bees and birds, and particularly trees and weeds and 
flowers, held me at a very early age. Now the time had come when 
I could indulge myself very little; only on Sundays which I usually 
devoted to poetry and to roaming among the woods and hills of the 
adjacent country — along the Ohio River on the Kentucky side, or 
near the Falls of the Ohio on the Indiana side, or among the Knobs 
that had become endeared to me in my boyhood — all beautiful and 
picturesque. 

Mr. William Dean Howells was the first to extend to me a word 
of encouragement, which has been sustained and emphasized by him 
with the publication of each new book by me. He was my first literary 
friend. James Whitcomb Riley came into my life early in my career 
and we then formed a staunch personal, as well as literary friendship 
which has not waned with the passage of years. My friendship with 
Mr. Howells has extended over some twenty years; with Riley over 
some sixteen or seventeen. Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr. Arthur Symons, 
and Mr. Andrew Lang in England, are all good friends of mine. It 
is true I have never met any of them, but we correspond at intervals 
and Mr. Gosse proposed the English edition of my poems for which 

272 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

he made the selection and also wrote the introduction. Mr. Lang has 
reviewed my work at length and most favorably; in fact, as Mrs. 
Louise Chandler Moulton said to me, I have the distinction of being 
the only living American poet that Mr. Andrew Lang ever praised. 

I write in the mornings usually; immediately on rising, before 
breakfast, I go to my desk. After breakfast I write as long as I am so 
inclined. Of course I do not write poetry every day. Sometimes 
months pass, and sometimes a year, when I write little or nothing. 
Often I write in the woods, the country, composing in my mind as I 
walk along, and after finishing the stanza, stopping to record it in my 
note book. Most of my last book, now in MS., was written in this 
manner. The entire volume of some 150 MS. pages was composed in 
less than two months. Up to the time I began the writing of it I had 
not written a new line of verse for a year. When I am engaged upon a 
poem — like the Ode written for the Gloucester, Massachusetts 
occasion — I sleep, eat, walk, sit and stand with it. I cannot get away 
from it until it is finished to my satisfaction, or the satisfaction of the 
one within me whose judgment passes upon it. 

I suppose I have read everything, or at everything, ever written. 
Science has held me and led me; Philosophy, the companion of Poetry, 
always; medieval poetry, mythology and legendary love have 
influenced me in my earlier work. German poetry from the 
"Niebelungen Lied" down, as well as folklore traditions of Germany and 
the Old World in general have always captivated me. The Provencal 
tales of the troubadours, jongleurs. Courts of Love, have been my 
delight and impressed themselves upon my poetry at intervals. And 
this is true of the myth and romance of all countries, which swayed 
me at the time of their reading, and may they always sway and hold 
me! Very truly yours, Madison Cawein. 

1908, January 3. 

Eric Pape: * * * Get the January number of The North 
American Review, and read what Mr. Howells has to say of "our" 
books [The Poems of Madison Cawein]. This notice of my poems 
should persuade some publisher to undertake, right away, the pub- 
lication of the Ode. If it doesn't, I shall lose all faith in myself, 
the Ode and the occasion that called it forth, as well as the efficacy 
of any review, good or bad, to help a struggling poet along. * * * 

1908, January 12. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Your "The Legend of the Red 
Rose" is a very lovely legend, very gracefully told and with many 
charming Hnes. I like it as well as your "A Miracle of St. Cuthbert." 

273 



Madison C a w e i n 

It is different, but it is beautiful, too. I would like to see you turn 
your poetic ability to other lines — American ones, if possible. I never 
cared much for religious poetry — or rather themes of religion done 
into poetry. To tell you the truth I never was religious and never 
will be according to the requirements and directions of the creeds of 
the churches of the Christian world. I am a pagan, always and 
always. I can see these old legends in the light of faulty tales. 
They strike me as being an inferior sort of fairy story; but I prefer 
the real fairy tale — the out-and-outer. Tennyson did so, too, and 
made a beautiful poem out of one of them. You could, too. * * * 



1908, January 12. 

Ivan Swift: Your Fagots of Cedar have made and left a sweet, 
wild aroma in my house, and I want to thank you for the pleasure 
they have given me. "Songs of the Cedar- Maker" would be hard 
to beat. It is a song right out of the heart of the country of which 
you sing so wildly and so well. * * * 



1908, March 15. 

Mrs. Alicia K. Van Buren: How we do wish we were with you 
and your little coterie of writers in Florida — John Burroughs, among 
them! Why, you are certainly to be envied. Of all men writing at 
the present time about nature, he is assuredly the greatest. His 
companionship in the woods and fields is tantarnount to a liberal 
education, and I am sure you are profiting by his presence. And 
dear Mr. Trowbridge, the good gray poet, and his wife! * * * Let 
me congratulate you once more on your having a poem taken by 
Harper s. You are surely forging ahead, and will continue to suc- 
ceed, as you deserve to. Your work, as far as I am able to judge, is 
improving steadily. I am sincerely glad and Gertrude joins me in 
extending congratulations. * * * 



1908, April 16, New York. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: We came to New York last Thursday and 
have been having a delightful time with Doctor Henry Van Dyke and 
others. * * * At "Avalon," Doctor Van Dyke's home at Prince- 
ton, we were royally received and entertained. Doctor Van Dyke 
has one of the most magnificent homes in that city. His library and 
study are superb. He, his wife, son and daughters are all lovely 
people, and did everything they could to make us enjoy ourselves. 

274 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

He, his wife and daughter, Brook Van Dyke, came to New York with 
us and we have passed a very pleasant time with them. At the 
banquet of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, given last 
night at the University Club, I met many famous men, poets, artists, 
musicians and sculptors— among them Percy Mackaye, the author 
of the poetic drama Sappho and Phaon, and Joan of Arc, Ridgely 
Torrence, Edwin Markham and Harrison S. Morris, and a host of 
others. I was called upon for a speech by the president, William M. 
Sloane, author of the Life of Napoleon Bonaparte and, all unprepared 
as I was, got up and said a few things. F. Hopkinson Smith made 
some witty remarks and referred to my speech with some praise. 
Harrison S. Morris was in to see us this morning and brought me his 
last volume of poems. Lyrics and Landscapes, just published by the 
Century Company. It is a pretty book and contains some very 
beautiful poetry. You will like it, I know. He is a very fine poet 
indeed, and, as a man, a true souled fellow whom I like greatly. * * * 

1908, April 23. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: We returned from New York on Monday, 
and were glad to get back. We had a beautiful time but a cloud was 
cast over the entire affair by our being robbed at the Hotel. Gertrude 
was robbed of all her rings and a diamond and an opal stick-pin. 
[None was recovered.] 

I met F. Dempster Sherman at the Century Club and had a 
long talk with him about poets and poetry. He, you know, was one 
of Mr. Aldrich's chief henchmen — a great personal friend of Aldrich 
and one worthy of being such. He told me a great deal about Mr. 
Aldrich's attitude towards my poetry, which was very flattering 
indeed. It was an interesting conversation. Ridgely Torrence and 
Edward Arlington Robinson were the only other poets I saw after 
the banquet. Both are interesting young men. * * * I expect 
Walter Malone in Louisville the end of the month on his way to 
Memphis. Did you see Gertrude's sonnet in The Smart Set last 
February? * * * ["Beloved, If Tonight," Smart Set, February, 
1908.] 

1908, April 26. 

Eric Pape: Your letter just received and thank you over and 
over again for the portrait [large portrait of Mrs. Cawein by Eric 
Pape] and the photos which we have so greatly admired. They are 
quite a gift and, my dear boy, you know that they are appreciated; 
how much I cannot say in words. The portrait looks stunning in 
our parlor and grows upon us every time we pass the door. It is a 

275 



Madison C aw e i n 

noble work of art. Doctor Van Dyke [who was here in March] liked 
the photographs greatly and retained one of the portraits, and I also 
gave him one of the others to have framed for his study. He selected 
the one of the ghostly figures at the door of the old house. He was 
overjoyed to have it. He said it was a beautiful and impressive 
picture, of which he should like to see the original. His home is so 
magnificent, so full of great works of art, including an oil painting 
of himself by Alexander, life-size, and one of his wife and little girl 
also by Alexander, and countless other things, that I took it as quite 
an honor that he wished to have these pictures also framed and hung 
up in his lovely home in Princeton. It is a house of the Colonial 
order dating back to 1750 — before the Revolution, and he has built 
and added to it. Great urns, set up on a balustrade, like these in 
your illustration of "Marianna," are placed here and there around 
the entrance and side. * * * He is a fine fellow and a great club 
man. He placed me at three clubs while in New York: The Cen- 
tury, The Players and The University. You would like him, I am 
sure, if you ever met him. His daughters are lovely girls, five in 
number, of which the youngest, Katrina, is only three years old. 
The eldest. Brook Van Dyke, is to be married in June, and to the son 
of William Hamilton Gibson, whose work you may remember. He 
was an old favorite of mine. Doctor Van Dyke has sent us a number 
of beautiful books, his own and others, all bound handsomely at 
the Adams' Bindery in New York. 

We saw Gilder [in New York] and sent him the photograph [of 
Mr. Pape's portrait of Mrs. Cawein] which, I hope, he will think 
enough of to place in The Century. He was most kind and brought 
my books down to the parlor for me to autograph. He thinks the 
illustrations splendid and the edition superb. He is very noncom- 
mittal when it comes to things going into The Century. He did not 
say he would or he would not publish the portrait. But we left it, 
nevertheless. Let us hope for the best. 

I met Percy Mackaye, the poet, at the banquet [of the National 
Institute of Arts and Letters], and had a pleasant chat with him. 
He is a fine, a striking fellow, and a true poet. He stands far ahead 
of the rest of the poetic dramatists in this country, I think. There 
were a number of artists at the banquet, and sculptors also, whose 
names I had never heard before, but they are famous in New York. 
I hoped to see your name on the list and it will be, as it deserves to 
be some day, I am certain. You should be a member ; you are as worthy 
as, if not worthier than, some of those who are already members. I 
note your illustrations to the Terry Memoirs in McClures. They are 
fine. Those also of the Well's volume in Pearson s are excellent also. 
When the books are out I shall get them at once I spoke to Sloan, 
President of the Institute, about you, and he said nice things about 
your illustrations to his Napoleon. * * * 

276 



A Posthumous Autohio graphy 

The Ode is receiving some notices and I shall send you what I 
have. The Boston papers have had a few brief notices — nothing to 
speak of — Globe and Advertiser — not worth mentioning. But the 
Louisville papers have had long and fine notices in them. You can 
keep those I send to you. You see the Ode was so commented upon 
at the time of its delivery that the newspapers will pay little or no 
attention to it now. 

As to going to Spain, I should be more than pleased, charmed, 
to make the trip with you this summer, but fear that one thing or 
another will prevent. Finances mainly, as I owe something like 
$9,000; $2,500 of which was borrowed to pay for the publication of my 
books. [The Poems of Madison Cawein.] The rest to pay for the 
new home we bought last year. The interest on this sum is due 
next month, and also the principal on the $2,500 note. Were it not 
for this I would say, sure, I'll go. It would be a magnificent 
experience. 

I feel ashamed of myself for writing you what those cards cost 
me. I did not intend that you send me the money for them. You 
have done so much for me, and given me so many lovely things that 
I feel that I ought to do something for you in return, and this. Lord 
knows, was very little. Perhaps, some day I can do something really 
worth while for you in return for all that you have done for me and 
mine. * * * 



1908, June 15. 

Miss Anna Blanche McGill [then in New York]: It was good 
of you to write me so beautifully of the Ode, and the sonnets that 
are printed with it. Also to let me know that I had one more admirer 
in the world of men. Recently I re-read Lowell's Commemoration 
Ode, and the re-reading put me out of patience with my poor little 
endeavor, of which I think far less now than I did last summer. 
It is foolish for any poet to attempt to do anything in this line since 
Lowell put up the standard. 

Louisville is getting rather dull now. Settling down to the long 
summer lethargy. We see the Cottells as usual and they see us 
sometimes. Last night we bade Dr. Wm. H. Ramsey [of the 
First Unitarian Church] goodbye. He leaves today for England 
and thence to Ireland. I can imagine the good time he will have 
revisiting his boyhood haunts and intim'ates. He wanted me to go 
with him, but I have other things to keep me occupied. 

I suppose you are doing some writing in New York. Could not 
conceive of your idling ever. I hear that you have had a story taken 
by some magazine East. Good for you. Keep it up. * * * 
Regards to Josephine. * * * 

277 



Madison C a w e i n 



1908, August 16. 



R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Gertrude and I have been invited 
by Captain Burgess of the U. S. A. to take a trip this week on his 
private boat on Barren River and Green River, Kentucky, and 
we are going. They say it is a beautiful trip as it goes through 
Edmonson County, the County of Mammoth Cave and other great 
caves, many of which are unexplored. The trip will occupy not 
quite a week. We promise ourselves a good time. * * * [They 
returned on the 22nd. Mr. Cawein made his first trip to Mammoth 
Cave and Colossal Cave in 1898.] 

1908, September 6, Annisquam, Massachusetts. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Your two letters posted on the high seas, 
from Madeira and the Canary Islands were forwarded to me here, at 
my friends the Papes, where Preston, Gertrude and myself are spend- 
ing the month of September. We are having magnificent weather 
and a beautiful time. We are out in Mr. Rape's yacht, the Viva, a 
great deal. Preston enjoys it as much as any of us. * * * We 
were on the water all day yesterday. We went to Newburyport and 
then up the Merrimac River, famous in song and story, to Amesbury, 
the birthplace of Whittier. We passed under the chain-bridge, over 
the Merrimac, made famous by a poem of Whittier's. * * * AH 
around this region the country is hallowed by poetical associations. 
I have written a number of sonnets — in the woods, on the rocks, by 
the sea, and shall write more. * * * 

I wish you were here with us. Such weather! Such air! Such 
beauty of sea and sky and land! It is strange that both of us should 
be having ocean experiences this summer and so different, in such 
different places. I wish you were here, and then I wish I were where 
you are. The world is great and full of wonders, and the works of 
man are not the least of them. * * * a night or so ago we beheld 
the heavens in magnificent display. The Aurora Borealis flashed 
and circled and came and went in the northern heavens. And in the 
midst of it all a great flaming meteor ploughed its way completely 
across the heavens, adding to the wonder. A wonderful phenomenon, 
beautiful and awe-inspiring. * * * 

1908, September 27. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Your letter mailed from Montevideo, S. A., 
came yesterday. * * * w^g returned from Annisquam last 
Wednesday. While there I wrote a great deal among the woods and 
along the shore. Eric Pape was especially pleased with some thirteen 

278 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

sonnets, all of them full of pictures of that wonderful coast, as well as 
the interior. Pape took me to Dogtown, an abandoned village, not 
far from Annisquam and Gloucester. * * * The place is the 
weirdest I have ever seen. I wrote a ballad while walking or sitting 
there — a witch-ballad, one of the wildest things I have ever done. I 
call it "Gammer Gaffer." 

1908, November 18. 

John L. Patterson: Thank you for your metrical translation 
of Bion's "Lament For Adonis." How lucky you are to be able to 
read it in the original Greek. It is a beautiful poem, without question, 
and one well worth reading and re-reading. I thank you again. 
Very truly yours, Madison Cawein. 

1908, December 14. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Glad to hear that you have returned from 
Buenos Aires and are back in St. Louis again and at work. * * * 
Gertrude is contemplating a trip — a Christmas gift of mine to her — to 
France next month, with a lady friend of hers, Mrs. Austin Ballard. 
She will go to Paris where there are a number of our friends who 
will show her a good time; Doctor and Mrs. Van Dyke, for instance. 
I can not go myself as I haven't enough money for two. I shall go 
to Europe sometime, I suppose, when I can afiford it. I don't 
care for France; it's England I want to see. * * * 



1908, December 28. 

Ethel Allen Murphy: Thank you for your book. The Angel of 
Thought, which came to me so appropriately the Eve of Christmas. 
I have enjoyed it greatly. You have written some notable religious 
sonnets. Indeed, I hardly know where to look for better ones. One 
particularly enthralls me, the one entitled "The Loving Christ." 
Not even Rossetti has done better. That is really your height, the 
finest thing you have ever done, and a sonnet the masters would be 
proud to have written. * * * 

1909, January 7. 

Miss Laura Stedman: In answer to your letter of the 4th, I am 
sending you three letters, which I received from your grandfather, and 
which I have cherished now for years. 

279 



Madison Cawein 

The two earliest letters, written in 1888 and 1889, on my sending 
to him Blooms of the Berry, my first volume of poems, published in 

1887, and my second volume The Triumph of Music, published in 

1888, and my third, Accolon of Gaul, published the following year, 
were letters that contributed a great deal to my encouragement. 
They filled me with a new enthusiasm, and I went to work with re- 
newed ardor, and have been working on the lines and in the direction 
which he so kindly indicated in his second letter to me. It is true I 
have taken that direction unconsciously, as it were, but he foresaw 
that I would take it, and knew that in the end it would be well for me. 
American landscape, nature, men and women, hold me now, and have 
held me for years. 

I met Mr. Stedman once or twice, and corresponded with him 
during a period of some twenty years. The three letters I inclose, 
however, are the only ones that I think would be of interest to the 
world. I have no others so intimate, so beautiful. These are letters 
that I value above all others in my possession, and I hope you will 
return them at once as soon as copied. Very sincerely, Madison 
Cawein. 



1909, January 20. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Gertrude sails on the "Koenig 
Albert," on the thirtieth of January, for Naples, taking the Mediter- 
ranean trip. From there she goes to Rome, Florence, probably Venice, 
and thence to Paris. On her return she will visit London for a few 
days. She will be gone until May. Dr. Van Dyke writes from Paris 
that he wants me to come over. He has included me in a lecture on the 
Poetry of America, to be delivered at the University of Paris in 
March. He says he wants me to hear one of my poems he is going to 
read on that occasion. I am sorry I can not be there to hear him. 
His lectures have proven — as all he undertakes — a great success. * * * 



1909, February 7. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j ^j^ z\a.d you liked my Poe 
sonnet [Poe: 1809 — January 19 — 1909] and also the few remarks made 
when I read it. I feel indignant with the literati of the East who 
have attacked Poe so unmercifully. * * * The people know his 
worth, even if those in power do not, and he will be in the Hall of 
Fame in spite of all their endeavors to the contrary. I have written 
a poem on Lincoln to be read at an assembly of Louisvillians Friday 
night in honor of his centenary. I think the poem is a pretty good 
one. I hope that the people will like it. If not — well! * * * 

280 



A Posthumous Auiobio graphy 

1909, February 13. 

Miss Anna Blanche McGill: There is no question as to the 
high Hterary quaHties and excellence of your poem "Resurrection." 
It is beautiful. Some of the lines are pure poetry of a very high 
order. The spirituality of the whole is unquestionable. I would 
not say these things if I did not mean them. What if the Atlantic did 
return it! It has returned hundreds of better poems than it ever 
published. It returned a hundred line poem of mine not so long ago 
which the Century promptly took. * * * 



1909, February 15. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Your sonnet on Poe is fine in spots. I read 
it at the Cottells' last night, and if there was some criticism of 
it, it made a favorable impression. There are lines of very definite 
beauty in it. The third and fourth lines are fine indeed. I did not 
care much for your apostrophe to the critic. It is not severe, caustic 
enough. I did not like the line referring to the sea's voice "quite 
ringing true." That could be strengthened, I think. Also "Then 
wherefore seek his fair renown to harm by base disparagement," does 
not strike me as clinching. You should give the detractors of Poe a 
solar-plexus jab, or a jaw-knockout blow, in the final winding up, 
that is, if you can. If you can't, let it rest as it is. The sonnet is a 
good one, and in a good cause, anyway. 

Yes, Mr. Ferris Greenslet did not see fit to include any of my 
Aldrich letters in his book. He never even wrote to me regarding 
them. I feel that he has it in for me for some reason. What it is 
I don't know, and moreover don't care. About two months ago I 
sent one long letter to the New York Times in which Mr. Aldrich 
wrote me in 1902, [October 7] on the outlook of poetry. It was 
given big headlines and a prominent place, [New York Times, 
December 5, 1908] and parts of it were copied far and wide. [It is 
reprinted in this volume. Chapter ix: Letters Received by Cawein.] 

The granddaughter of Edmund Clarence Stedman wrote me a 
month ago for letters I had received from her grandfather. I sent her 
three long ones, and she was most grateful as well as delighted. 
She said they were among the finest he had ever written. They 
may appear in Stedman's life. [Stedman's letter to Cawein, May 12, 
1889, appears in Laura Stedman's Life and Letters of Edmund Clarence 
Stedman, igio and is reprinted in Chapter ix of this volume.] 

I like my Aurora sonnet better than I do the one on Poe or even 
the Lincoln. But you see I am a nature poet and nature always 
appeals to me, even in poetry, more than men do. * * * 

281 



Madison C aw e i n 
1909, April 26. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * i found very few typographical 
errors in the proof of your A Miracle of St. Cuthhert and Sonnets which 
I read very carefully and turned over to John P. Morton & Company. 
* * * The poems impressed me more on reading them in the 
proof than they did when I read them in the manuscript. You have 
several sonnets there that are of a very high order of excellence. 
The two narrative poems that open the book have a quaintness, a 
Spenserian archaicness about them, that makes them delightful 
reading to me. * * * 



1909, April 29. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: You give me entirely too much credit. 
What I have done has not amounted to anything. The work is your 
own entirely. A word here or there; a passage; a suggestion, that 
was all, and whether your work benefited by it is questionable. I 
have simply been the conscientious critic, that is all! The work is 
yours — and it is excellent work, I will maintain. You speak of your 
desire to write one great sonnet. Who knows? Perhaps posterity 
will find in this small collection of yours not one sonnet, but three that 
it will consider great. Dr. Cottell raves about two of your 
sonnets and I know that the members of the Filson Club were most 
enthusiastic about one, "The Rose." The other one Cottell declares 
as great is your ["On the] Beach at San Pedro." I think that is the 
title. There is one that is my favorite; it is "Colonial." There you 
have three sonnets that perhaps will appeal to posterity more than 
any one of mine. Who knows? Leave the sifting to time. You will 
do your work, and if you are to do any better than that which you 
have done, then you will do it. You can not force poetry. It 
comes, if it is to come, and the best things we do are done unex- 
pectedly. So I have always found. 

As to the criticism you fear so much and the newspaper notoriety 
in the way of articles, such as you mention, it is true all such are to be 
deplored. But we can not help it. The newspapers must and will 
have their fling at all art — poetry especially. I had my share of it. 
For four or five years I was written up as the Pool-Room poet, simply 
because I had to earn a living, and fate had placed me in the cashier's 
department of a gambling house. People looked askance at me and 
my verse and would not buy my books here in Louisville because I 
was working in a gambling house. Even now, though twenty years 
have elapsed since then, there are echoes of what I did — was com- 
pelled to do to earn a livelihood. 

282 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

I ignored all such allusions and have lived them down. Happily 
you, too, will do the same, if you have not already done so — now 
that your connection with the St. Louis Asylum is a thing of several 
years past. No; do not be afraid of what the newspapers may say 
about you. All newspaper notice, either favorable or unfavorable, 
is most ephemeral and not worth a serious moment's thought, and 
by no means worth worrying over. Printed today, forgotten next 
week. So I have found it, and so it will always be. Gertrude sails 
on Saturday and I shall be very happy when she is home again. 
Your friend ever, Madison Cawein. 

[A facsimile of this letter appears on pages 284 to 287.] 



1909, May 13. 

R. E. Lee Gibson : Thank you again for your good words about 
my poetry. Gertrude returned the evening of the day I received your 
letter. She is looking radiant. She had a magnificent time through 
Italy, France and England. She liked England best of all. She 
visited Stratford and saw a play in the Shakespeare Theatre there. 
She is full of anecdotes and incidents; we never tire of hearing her 
talk. She saw a great deal of the Van Dykes. Dr. Van Dyke 
came over to London, and for five days showed her and Mrs. Austin 
Ballard about. She saw Grant Richards, the publisher, a number of 
times, and was at Edmund Gosse's twice. Gosse said he considered 
me the only poet in America, and since the death of Swinburne 
probably the only great English poet writing now! He said this in 
all seriousness to Gertrude. 

Mr. Richards, who does not like Gosse, said several uncompli- 
mentary things about Gosse's poetry, but wound up by saying: 
"But he can pick 'em. If he ever holds one up to his critical eye and 
passes upon him, you can count upon his being correct." He also 
said he never saw Gosse go out of his way to call attention to a poet 
as he did in my case. * * * 



1909, May 17. 

Dr. Henry Van Dyke: Well, Gertrude is back again, and 
has been regaling us with all the wonders of her new experiences and 
the marvelous glories of Italy, France and England. She is in 
excellent spirits (but when is she not?) and in buoyant health. She 
never looked better or happier. I thank you and Mrs. Van Dyke. 
It was most lovely of all of you, you especially, to take so much 
trouble and time, for you are busy, I know, in many ways — my dear 
[Concluded on page 288.] 

283 



Madison C aw e i n 

Facsimile of the first page of a four-page letter from Madison 
Cawein, April 29, 1909, to his friend, Robert E. Lee Gibson, of St. Louis. 



284 



A Posthumous Autob iography 







^^^TLt::^ -l-s; 




c~ 



Facsimile of the second page of a four-page letter fromlMadison 
Cawein, April 29, 1909, to his friend, Robert E. Lee Gibson, of St. Louis. 




285 



Madison C aw e i n 















Facsimile of the third page of a four-page letter from Madison 
Cawein, April 29, 1909, to his friend, Robert E. Lee Gibson, of St. Louis. 



286 



A Posthumous Autobio graphy 








Facsimile of the fourth page of a four-page letter from Madison 
Cawem, April 29, 1909, to his friend, Robert E. Lee Gibson, of St. Louis. 



287 



Madison C a w e i n 

Henry Van Dyke, to show Mrs. Cawein and Mrs. Ballard the loveli- 
ness of the one city in the world. She is home again, thank heaven! 
and full, brimming over with enthusiasm for all she saw, and all you 
showed her. It did her a world of good, and I am glad I gave her 
the trip, although I missed her tremendously, and toward the end of 
April could hardly await her return. She cannot talk enough of you 
and your kindness, of Mrs. Van Dyke and your daughters, of every- 
thing, in fact. Indeed, you and yours pervade the whole theme of 
rapturous experience like a wonderful chord, a dominant note, of 
which the ear never tires, in a magnificent strain of music. 

I want to thank you for the beautiful little watch which has 
made Preston very proud already. What it will do to him when he 
is really able to understand the value of such a gift from such a 
distinguished man, I am unable to prophesy. 

The volumes of verses from England are giving me more or less 
entertainment. It is greatly worth knowing, at the present time, 
that the younger set of poets in England are not doing any better 
work, if as good, as is being done by the younger generation of poets 
in this country. There is more freshness, more spontaneity, more 
youth really in the poetry of our poets than there is in the poetry of 
the poets writing in England at the present time. * * * 



1909, May 19. 

Eric Paper * * * j -^[sh that you and the Lady Alice and 
Moritz [Mrs. Eric Pape and their son] were here now. It is lovely. 
The Court looks beautiful and Gertrude is home again. * * * 
Preston was in the seventh heaven of happiness at her return. She 
brought him some magnificent soldiers from Italy and France. I 
wish Moritz could see them. They are superb and they could have a 
great time fighting battles with them. * * * 

Well, young man, so you are head over ears in business again 
with the redoubtable city of Gloucester. I hope that that city 
appreciates your efforts to make its pageants and dedications suc- 
cesses. Some of its citizens, I am sure, appreciate your good works 
in their interest. Your letter and cards woke longings in my breast 
for the dear old places among the Cape Ann hills that we frequented 
and dreamed and poetized in last summer. It is a beautiful place 
and full of inspiration for both artist and poet. My New Poems will 
be out the last of May, in London, and one of the first copies received 
goes to my good friend and compatriot in art, Eric Pape; you will 
find in this volume, which, I fancy, is one of the best I have ever 
written, all the poems written at your dear little home last summer and 
several others written after arriving home. My mother-in-law, Mrs. 

288 



A Po sthumous Autoh io gr aphy 

McKelvey, better known to you and Lady Alice as "Miss Annie," 
is much interested in your beautiful Cape Ann and the Papes inci- 
dentally, and Moritz particularly. * * * 



1909, June 9. 

Eric Pape: I take it much unkindly that thou hast not seen fit 
to come to Old Kentucky this month. Why and wherefore? We 
are greatly disappointed to learn from the Lady Alice that you could 
not, or would not, come with her and Moritz. It is too bad. Why 
not cut out work for a while and come to God's Country and loaf 
with me and Gertrude? Forget toil. It is good for one's soul to do 
it every now and awhile. The Coburn Players will be here the end 
of June at the Country Club, and we could go and see the Canter- 
buries as there presented. Now try to come to see us. Preston has 
a tent in the backyard where he and Moritz could have a fine time 
with his toys. He also has some chickens that lay fresh eggs every 
day. Moritz I am sure would enjoy it. * * * 



1909, June 19. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: You overwhelm me. Yes, I do believe I 
have some of my best poetry in New Poems. I do not care what the 
critics say about it, or whether an American publisher will think well 
enough of the volume to import it. The book, I am sure, will stand. 
I feel better satisfied with this volume than with any other I ever 
published. I have arrived at an age and a stage in poetry when I 
feel that I know better than any critic when I have written a good 
poem. And this little book certainly contains some of my best 
work. * * * 



1909, June 23. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I see you still think well of the book [New 
Poems]. There are several poems in it which you have not mentioned 
that I think the best in the volume. They are "Tramps" and "The 
Shadow." I am sure of these and that nothing like them has ever 
been done before. In a certain way they are what one might call 
dramatic. They satisfy me. * * * it makes no difference to 
me what any one says about it, good or bad, I am certain that the 
poetry in this little book is worth while. I have devoted twenty-five 
years now to the writing and reading of verse and I think I have 
passed my apprenticeship and am able to judge. * * * 

289 



Madison C a w e i n 
1909, July 18. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I go to the woods every now and then and 
select some deep retreat, remote and treey, with a rock or a stump, 
by some pool or running water, and there I dream and invite the muse. 
All my rl&cent work has been done in the open, among the trees. 
I find I can write better in this way and do better work. If it were 
not for the gnats and chiggers I would get along better, but they do 
annoy one fearfully at times. * * * 

1909, July 25. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: We are going to Cape Ann. * * * \Yg 
are to be the guests of Eric Pape at Annisquam from August third 
till I know not when. I have been appointed one of the judges to 
bestow prizes in the Gloucester Pageant where Percy Mackaye's 
"The Canterbury Pilgrims" is to be performed. President Taft is to 
be present on that occasion — and a number of artists, poets, players, 
sculptors and dramatists. The list of persons represents some of 
our greatest names. Percy Mackaye is to be the guest of the Papes, 
so is Charles Rann Kennedy, the author of "The Servant in the House," 
and his wife, who plays a part in that superb play, which I hope you 
have seen. * * * 



1909, August 29, Annisquam, Massachusetts. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * We met the President yesterday 
at John Hays Hammond's. His face broadened into a great smile 
when he learned that Gertrude and I were from Louisville. He 
knew a number of judges and lawyers whom I knew. President 
Taft is certainly a man of men. Both of us liked him immensely. 
The affair at the Hammond's, held on the lawn, was most delight- 
ful. * * * 



1909, September 5. 

Eric Pape: Home again at last after the greatest month passed 
with you that my life records. It was certainly a month of wonder 
and filled to overflowing with events and meetings. It all seems like 
a dream now, and I wonder if it is true that we were with you, that 
we met the interesting people that we did meet, among them the 
first person of the land. President Taft, and the great English actress 
and her renowned husband, Charles Rann Kennedy. But we must 

290 



A Posthumous Autoh io gr a phy 

have met them as we have the souvenirs which they sent to us and 
gave to us personally — I mean the Kennedys. Thinking it all over, 
old fellow, all those trips around the Cape and to Boston were simply 
indescribably lovely. You, and the lovely Lady Alice, are simply 
incomparable. No two other hosts, I am certain, are there like you 
in these broad lands. You made us happy, Gertrude and me, and 
we recognize it and appreciate it. You have set the standard of 
entertainment so high that I fear that, if you ever do come to Ken- 
tucky, we can never touch you, much less reach you, in any degree. 
In the first place we haven't the wealth here, nor the artistic and liter- 
ary people, nor the President, who make for all that is great in a great 
nation. But we have other things — different in a way — that count 
for something in life. Some day, I hope not far off, you will give 
us an opportunity of showing a little attention in a Kentucky way, 
to you and the noble Alice and little Moritz. Preston we found well 
and happy. He was greatly interested in all we had to tell him of 
Annisquam and Moritz and Mr. and Mrs. Pape. He grows apace 
and will soon be a young man. He already has some of the airs of 
the young men who make up our State's gallantry. 

The trip home was long and, toward the end, hot and tiresome. 
The ship was a novelty and a delight all the way from Boston to 
Norfolk. The captain. Captain Chase, next to whom we sat at table, 
singled us out for special attention and was with us talking and laugh- 
ing most of the trip to Norfolk. He is a fine wholesome fellow. 



1909, October 21. 

Walter Malone: I have read with much care your pamphlet of 
selections from your epic "Hernando De Soto" and have been greatly 
entertained. There are many fine passages throughout the selections. 
The epic is full of pictures — painted as you only know how to paint 
such pictures — in magnificent colors that glow. Your song of the 
Indian maiden in the part entitled "The Dominions of Coosa," 
while most beautiful in rhyme and rhythm and in thought, does not 
impress me, I fear, as such a song as Indian maidens would sing. 
It is too literary. 

On the other hand, the metaphorical allusion to the dawn at the 
beginning of the part entitled "The Spoils of Cuzco" is worthy of 
Milton. Throughout the selections from the epic you have figures 
of speech, allusions, metaphors, whatever you may call them, that 
lend a glory to the description and surpass anything you have ever 
done heretofore, and anything in blank verse that has been done for 
many years in this country by even our best poets. The only thing 
that I am afraid of is that your epic tends toward being too long for 

291 



Madison C a w e i n 

the public. As for myself, and other poets, too, I suppose, that 
could never be. I read it as I read an interesting novel, or history. 
It held me from start to finish and the glamour has not yet departed. 
You are doing a great work; but will it be appreciated? I am the 
last one who should ask such a question, but at this time when poetry 
has fallen on evil days and tongues, a man has to have a wonderful 
amount of belief in the future of poetry, in order to devote himself to 
an epic of such length and magnitude. But all the more honor to 
you, even if it does not succeed. You will have done a good work. 
Your friend, Madison Cawein. 

1909, October 21. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Meredith Nicholson and his wife, 
from Indianapolis, are here with us. We read at the Woman's Club 
last night. * * * i rg^d some of my Child Rhymes from The 
Giant and the Star. The "Little Boy Sleepy" took the audience 
completely; the "Epilogue" pleased them also, but not as much as the 
sleepy little boy. I hope the public will purchase this book of rhymes 
as I am sadly in need not only of a little success in this line but also 
of money to discharge certain obligations entailed in publishing this 
book. That's what overhangs me — the gloom of rejection. If you 
have not the money to publish your own poetry, you might as well 
give up the production of the book. No publisher wants poetry now, 
no matter how good or bad it may be. It does not sell, and the near 
outlook for a revival is as far off as the North Pole, which I doubt 
has ever been discovered, although they say it has. * * * 

1909, November 3. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Yes, I met the old poet, William D. 
Gallagher, years ago, here in Louisville where he dwelt for some time, 
and died unnoticed and uncommented upon. He was an old, shy, 
diffident man, as I remember him. I had not read much of his work, 
but since then, some twenty years or less ago, I have come to admire 
some of his works greatly. "Miama Woods," for instance, is a good 
though old-fashioned poem. Others might be mentioned also. He 
was quite a stir in his day. * * * 

1909, December 26. 

Eric Pape: * * * j ^j^ gXa-d to learn from your letters that 
you are at work on some paintings. I am sure that both the Bull 
Fight and the Golden Rose will be masterpieces. That is the sort of 
news I like to hear. That is the sort of things you ought to be doing 

292 



A Posthumous Autob io graphy 

instead of attempting any more pageants which eat up your time and 
energy and coin, and bring you in nothing but disappointment and a 
headache, while others get the credit for what they did not do. Stick 
to your brush and canvas. They cannot take the credit or the fame 
away from you for what you do with these. These things that you 
do will last, and outlast all the pomps and pageants of the world. 
The insubstantial is not a portion of such work as that which you 
put in oil upon enduring canvases; but it is a part of all pageantry, 
as you yourself are well aware. I should like to see these pictures 
and may see them some day. 

I have finished my book of Plays: three one act fanciful things 
called "The Shadow Garden," "The House of Fear" and "The 
, Witch" and one three act tragedy called "Cabestaing," a play of the 
time of the troubadours and, I think, stageable. They will be brought 
out in the spring by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, and I am 
dedicating the volume [The Shadow Garden and Other Plays] to my best 
of friends, Eric Pape, Artist. * * * 



1910, January 15. 

Eric Pape: * * * I just had a letter from the Columbia 
University at New York to come on and deliver a lecture on poetry 
to the graduates. I was selected to deliver this lecture in place of 
Richard Watson Gilder. A high compliment, and one that goes to 
show that the men at the head of Columbia University think well of 
my work, as they would not have asked me otherwise. Of course 
they will pay me, but I fear I can not accept as I have never lectured 
before. [He did not accept.] Brander Matthews recommended me, 
as also did Professor Trent and several others. John La Farge, 
Dr. Henry Van Dyke are to lecture, as are also a number of 
others. Within the past few months I have been made a member of 
the Authors' Club of London, England, of which George Meredith 
was president, and whose president now is, or will be, the poet laureate, 
Alfred Austin. * * * 



1910, February 17. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: We have had a very busy week of it. Dr. 
Van Dyke has been with us and is still here, but leaves today. He is 
a charming man and a whole-hearted one, too. I wish you could 
meet him. He came to visit us after a tour of several days lecturing 
at various clubs and universities. * * * John Fox, Jr., and his 
wife are here also, and we had a little affair at our home that stirred 
up the natives. Fritzi Schefif, as you know, is Fox's wife; she is a 

293 



Madison C a w e i n 

charmer as well as a singer. Last night we had a great time at the 
theatre, and after that an elaborate dinner at the Rathskeller of the 
Seelbach Hotel whereat much champagne was drunken. I like these 
little diversions; they make one forget one's troubles. * * * 

I, too, hope that things will do better; I'll try to keep up my 
spirits with that hope. But things look rather dark. If one did not 
have to worry about money and living, what one could do in the way 
of art! I hate to think about it, for it seems that as long as we are 
mortals we shall be compelled to wear clothes and to eat and keep up 
appearances. Civilization has its exactions. * * * 

1910, March 2. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Last week I received a check from 
Scrihners Magazine for a poem of forty lines. The check was for 
$50.00, the largest amount I ever received for a single poem of this 
length. * * * "The Shadow Garden" is the finest thing I have 
done yet. Nothing that I have ever done can compare with it, so all 
affirm. * * * 

1910, March 19. 

R. E. Lee Gibson : Spring, I think, is arrived at last. We have 
had an ideal week of lovely weather. Preston had a birthday yester- 
day, and is very proud of his six years. Mine comes next week 
when I shall be forty-five years old. Think of it! Time to begin to 
patch up my body for the grave, eh? So time slips by. I am busy 
with the proofs of my book of plays [The Shadow Garden and Other 
Plays]. * * * 

1910, May 10, 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j have just met George Ade here 
at the Pendennis Club. He is quite a sport. He is here for the 
races — the Derby is to be run today. Quite a prosperous-looking 
gentleman with an air of seriousness about him, and his appearance, 
face and manner, would suggest anything but that of a literary 
character. He seems to be well provided with the material things of 
earth. * * * 

1910, May 15. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j have just read in The New York 
Times a most complimentary review of a book of poetical plays by 
one whose name is unknown to me — Ernest Lacy. It is called Plays 
and Sonnets and the Bard of Mary Redcliffe, that is Chatterton. The 

294 



A Posthumous Autob io graphy 

extracts given are superb poetry. I myself remember Julia Marlow 
playing this play of Chatterton some twelve or fifteen years ago. 
It seems that the poet since that time has elaborated and lengthened, 
as well as strengthened, the play. I thought you might care to 
know of this book that has won much fame in England for the author 
and is likely to do the same for him in his native land now — America. 
I imagine the book is worth having. * * * 

1910, June 14. 

Harrison S. Morris: You certainly have discharged your 
obligation beautifully. Your letter regarding The Shadow Garden 
has come, been read and has conquered. Thank you for your good 
opinion. Every one is writing me beautifully about the book. I 
had a letter from Dr. Van Dyke yesterday on the order of yours, 
and the other day one from England, from Arthur Christopher 
Benson who spoke of the book as being "pure poetry." 

You are certainly correct about that "amputated foot," but it 
was not my fault that the line underwent a surgical operation, but the 
printer's. I have proofs still with me that show that line went to 
press with "bells" on its toes, but appeared, when it came forth com- 
pletely attired without its "bells." It dropped its foot somewhere in 
the press. But it should read thus and will so read in a new edition. 

"And burst her brails and with her jingHng bells;" So you see 
that makes it walk correctly. There is a period missing also at the 
end of the line under this one — the line ending with the word "white." 
There are several typographical errors in the book. All of them 
crept in after the book went to press. I cannot understand it, * * * 

1910, June 19. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j thought I had written to you 
about my young lady friend. Miss Marion Forster Gilmore, of Louis- 
ville. I have been encouraging her ever since she was about fifteen 
years old. She is now about twenty-one years old. The tragedy 
"Virginia" that opens her book — Virginia, a Tragedy, and Other 
Poems — was submitted to me two or three years ago, and, as it was 
the work of a girl of eighteen, I thought it a very remarkable per- 
formance. I made the selections for this her first book from a mass 
of MMS. submitted to me by her father, Thomas M. Gilmore. He is 
crazy about his daughter and has done everything to encourage her 
and bring her talent to the front. She is an ethereal looking creature, 
but has a vigorous mind and one that will make its way in poetry, no 
doubt, as she advances in years and in the devotion which she now 
shows to her art. * * * 

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Madison C aw e i n 



1910, June 26. 



R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * ^n ig at a standstill with me just 
now. A lyric occasionally is all I do. Some have been taken by 
the magazines — a long one last week entitled "Shadows and the 
Moon," by The Forum; and this morning an acceptation from The 
Outlook of a lyric I wrote in the woods a week ago, entitled "The 
Wind in the Leaves." I write all my poetry in the woods now. * * * 
[See The Poet, the Fool and the Faeries, pages 51, 115, 21 ; and "The 
Wood Stream."] 

1910, August 24. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * It is very dull here — nothing doing 
except the stock market, which will not advance any or little when it 
isn't going down. * * * 

1910, September 14. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j received this month — since the 
first — checks amounting to $85.00, for poems, from the magazines. 
Last month my receipts from poetry, published books and magazine 
poems, amounted to over $200.00 That's not bad, is it? But Lordy! 
I needed it. Stocks have all gone to hell. * * * 

1910, October 15. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Preston is learning rapidly, and as 
long as he and Gertrude keep well I have nothing to complain of. 
As for myself, I am never sick [?] but keep on the hustle, and between 
the stock market and poetry I have little time for pleasure, except 
that which comes from good books. * * * [October 25] : * * * 
I have been sick. I was bragging in my letter to you that I was never 
ill. Lo and behold, a day or two afterwards I was taken down and 
suffered with chills and fever. * * * 

1910, December 20, Philadelphia. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: We are here visiting my dear old mother 
and my sister and her husband [Mrs. J. Henry Doerr and Mrs. and Mr, 
John F. Behney.] * * * My sister looks far from well. She is 
worn down by my mother's condition. Mother is in a very bad way. 
Poor soul ! poor soul ! She gets so homesick for her people. She wept 
and wept when she saw me, just like a little child. I could weep when 
I think of what she was once and what she is now. What a change! 
The source of all these things, I think, is homesickness — the loss of old 
friends gone on before, and of her last husband who simply idolized her. 

296 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

191 1, January 6, New York. 

Dr. Henry A. Cottell: Poets to right of me, poets to left of 
me, poets all round me volley and thunder. Sunday night we are 
to meet every poet of eminence in New York City, at our charming 
friend's. Miss Rittenhouse's. On Saturday evening I am to read from 
my poems and plays before the Forest Hill Club of Newark, New 
Jersey. They offer me a check for $25.00 for the evening's entertain- 
ment. It's worth going after, don't you think so? I am to read also 
privately, after a dinner Monday night, at Mrs. Jessie L. Barbour's 
[Jessie Lemont] apartment. None but the elite admitted. 

We went to see "The Girl of the Golden West" last night. Saw all 
the society of New York in the grand tier boxes and orchestra. Seats 
cost me $10.00. We go again to a matinee taking Miss Margaret S. 
Anderson of the Louisville Evening Post with us. We are to see 
Humperdinck's faery tale of Hansel and Gretel, followed by The 
Arabian Nights with the marvelous Russian Dancers in it over whom 
all New York has gone wild. We saw the two dancers last night and 
heard Caruso vociferate. He is a singer, but Amato, the baritone, 
pleases me more. The latter is a wonder. We have seen "The Blue 
Bird" too, and found it marvelous. "Chantecler" is the next on the 
list, maybe. Money is running low. Forty dollars in one week 
for shows is going some, eh? — for a poet. * * * Now take care 
of the Pendennis Club while I am away. * * * 

191 1, January 12, New York 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * \Ye have remained here to see the 
first performance of Rostand's "Chantecler," by Maude Adams, next 
Monday, and Percy Mackaye's play, "The Scarecrow," that is 
given a first appearance, on Tuesday. Percy Mackaye is having 
quite a number of his literary friends at the first performance: James 
Lane Allen, Edwin Arlington Robinson, ourselves, etc., etc. We 
have met all the poets of consequence here. At Miss Jessie B. Ritten- 
house's we met Mr. and Mrs. Markham, Witter Bynner, Percy 
Mackaye, Anna Hempstead Branch — who surpasses, as poet, all 
other women in America or England — Gertrude Hall and a number of 
others. Miss Anna Hempstead Branch's book of new poems is 
just out and you must read it. It is called A Rose of the Wind. It 
is a book that no lover of poetry can afford to miss. 

Yesterday I met, at Harper Brothers, Miss Edith M. Thomas 
and had a long chat with her. She is a grey-haired but bright-eyed 
and kind-faced woman, a spinster approaching sixty years, I suppose. 
I took lunch with Ridgely Torrence, one of our best poets I think; 
also called on Edwin Arlington Robinson whose new book. The Town 
Down the River, is full of great poetry. 

297 



Madison C a w e i n 

We are to meet at luncheon today Mr. and Mrs. Charles Coburn, 
of the Coburn Players, and Miss Jessie B. Rittenhouse and Ridgely 
Torrence. Tomorrow we go to the Coburns' to a reading and re- 
ception. Monday we are to go to the Charles Rann Kennedys'. 
She is the actress who is playing at the New Theatre. Her husband 
wrote "The Servant in the House." They are lovely people. Mrs. 
Kennedy is rehearsing for early production of "The Piper," by another 
friend of ours, Mrs. Josephine Preston Peabody. Her play took the 
Shakespeare prize last year at Stratford, over 500 or 600 submitted 
plays. * * * And so it goes and not half told yet. We remain 
here until the eighteenth. * * * 



191 1, January 20. 

Harvey Peake: * * * j have no bookplate. There is no 
reason why I shouldn't have one, but I simply neglected to provide 
myself with such. All well-regulated poets, as well as other types of 
writers, should have a bookplate. The only thing I am fortunate 
enough to possess is a crest; but I fear I have mislaid it, and it would 
not help me out of my predicament, even if I should lay my hands on 
it at this moment, for you want a bookplate. * * * 



191 1, January 24. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I am head over heels in work, doing the 
Introduction for The Macmillan Company [their The Book of Love, 
compiled by Jessie Reid] and never had a more difficult job. 
I despair now and then of making it worthy of the works — selected 
poems and sketches — it is to introduce. I am to be in great com- 
pany — the company of Shakespeare and of Tennyson and Browning, 
you bear in mind — and I have to do justice to their ghosts. 

I have made a number of selections for the new book [Poems by 
Madison Cawein, — selected by the author]. I don't think I shall put 
any of the poems in Ke?itucky Poems in this new volume of mine. 
Would it be right? Kentucky Poems is a book of selections, as you 
know, and why make selections from a volume of selections? It 
does not seem to me to be the right thing to do. * * * 

Gertrude returned home from New York last Saturday. She 
took my Shadow Garden and Other Plays to the manager of the New 
Theatre. She saw him personally and he said he is going to give 
the plays his attention. He told her that the New Theatre was 
looking for just such things by American poets and playwrights. 
[None of the plays has, as yet, been presented on the stage]. * * * 

298 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

191 1, February 10. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Yes, poor Riley! I almost wept when I 
read of his condition. * * * j ggg ^y today's paper that he had 
another stroke of paralysis. I want to run up to Indianapolis to see 
him. [About a week later he visited Mr. Riley for a few days. Mr.- 
Riley died July 22, 1916.] * * * 

191 1, March 8. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I finished my volume of selections this 
morning and am ready to deliver the goods to Macmillan's. * * * 
The poems, I think, are representative and among my very best — 
[Poems by Madison Cawein]. I sent you yesterday an advance copy 
of my little poem. So Many Ways. It is all handsomely colored, and 
the booklet, I think, is very cheap — retails for fifty cents a copy. 
Makes a nice little Easter gift. P. F. Volland & Company, Chicago, 
write me that nearly a thousand copies have been sold before publi- 
cation. The six artistic calendar panels that the same firm is to 
publish this spring will be out soon. They are beautiful and will 
sell for three dollars a set. * * * 

191 1, March 20. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * My mother died yesterday after- 
noon at two o'clock. She passed away peacefully, sister telegraphs 
from Philadelphia. * * * Xhe poor soul had no sense of feeling or 
consciousness of anything after being stricken down about two weeks 
ago. My sister is bringing my mother's body to Louisville. * * * 
She will be buried in beautiful Cave Hill. You will remember, you 
and I wandered through the place many years ago. * * * j ^^g 
all that I have to my mother. She was as noble a woman as ever 
lived and one who, with only two years of schooling, could hold her 
own among scholars, with ease. Her gift of discourse and expression 
was born in her — not acquired. I have often sat enthralled under the 
influence and the spell of her beautiful phrases. She could speak 
eloquently on spiritual things and matters — more eloquently and 
more interestingly than any preacher I ever heard. In fact, her 
eloquence disqualified me forever from listening to the stale saws and 
sermons of the ministry. But alas, she is gone! That bright eloquence 
is hushed and the light that held and possessed the souls of her child- 
ren is extinguished. * * * 

299 



Madison C aw e i n 

1911, May 24. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * i ^i^ gi^d you are pleased with 
my selection. I should have liked to include many more poems, like 
"Carmen" and "Had we lived in the days," etc., etc., but the pub- 
lishers wanted the book cut down, and they omitted some of the 
larger poems. As to the change made in the last stanza of "The 
Garden of Dreams," I found it necessary from the fact that the last 
two lines of the poem were not true to myself — song did not pass me 
by, for a fact; and albeit she has not behaved to me as well as she 
might I have no quarrel with her. The other, or the first version, is 
probably better than the last, but I thought in a volume like this it 
was better to speak of beauty than of song. You may have observed 
that I have returned to some of the original readings in certain of the 
poems that you like — notably in "Unrequited" that stands as it 
stood in Moods and Memories. A number of others, too, I have 
placed back as they were first presented. I wish I could have in- 
cluded the whole of "The Idyll of the Standing Stone" as well as all 
of "Some Summer Days," and "Wild Thorn and Lily" — some of the 
best poems I ever wrote. But it was impossible; so I selected what 
I thought the most representative part from each of them. I should 
have liked to include some blank verse pieces, but they are all too 
long. The publishers wanted short poems mainly and I made my 
selections from such. * * * 

191 1, May 30. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * It is terribly hot, but I think 
healthy. I am busy with my new volume, adding to it every day, 
and have decided to change its name from "A Web of Dreams" to 
"The Common Earth." The title poem is long and one of my very 
best creations. [Title of the book was later changed to The Poet, the 
Fool and the Faeries.] * * * 

1911, June 13. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Things are going slowly; nothing 
doing, except that I am writing again. More than ever. But all 
seems to be in abeyance — waiting for something — I know not what, 
but just a-waiting. * * * 

1911, July 4. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Well, here is the wretched Fourth! Hot as 
hell and getting hotter upon us suffering Americans again! How I 
do hate the Fourth ; not because I am unpatriotic, but because of the 

300 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

heat and the noise and sickness and accidents that follow in its train. 
All so senseless, and wrong, it seems. Preston is sick. He has had 
a fever for the past four days and I am worried about it. Poor little 
fellow! He has looked forward to the Fourth for so long and now 
he can't enjoy it at all, I fear. 

I am disgusted with life. Always something to mar our pleasure 
in the days that we should enjoy. One thing after the other — if it 
isn't sickness, it's lack of money, or anxiety about what's going to 
happen. I tell you I get awfully tired of life — of writing and working, 
and nothing coming from it all. I'll be glad when the wretched 
business of living is all over, and the restless soul is at last at rest. 

I am glad you liked my change of your lines. It struck me that 
it improved the stanza at any rate. The poem is a good one, I think, 
and so thinks the worthy Dr. Cottell. 

It was 104 degrees hot here yesterday. Such weather is enough 
to kill everybody off. The sooner the better, perhaps. There is 
really no incentive to any one's living. Every year brings greater 
discouragement, or less, or something of ill. Very little good in life. 
Excuse pessimism. Love from all. Your old friend, Madison. 



1911, July ii. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Anxiety knocks all poetry out of 
me. I can do nothing but wait until Preston is convalescent. 
I read a little, prose mainly, but occasionally a book of poems comes 
along that takes hold of me. Such a book is George Stirling's House 
of Orchids, just published in San Francisco. It stamps him as one 
of the greatest poets. His sonnets are wonderful. And his style 
throughout the poems is lofty and often reaches the sublime. I did 
not like his first book, or The Wine of the Wizardy, but in this last 
book he has done great things. * * * 



191 1, August i. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Good poetry is a scarce article 
these days; I see very little in the magazines and less in book form. 
Poetry is not encouraged enough in this country. Now in England 
it is quite different. I see that the government there has recently 
pensioned W. B. Yeats, and a poor poet named Davies who was a 
tramp at one time and still very poor. This puts the two poets in a 
position to devote their lives to poetry and dispense with anxiety for 
the future which simply eats out all the poetical quality in a man. 
I am anxious every day as to what is to become of me and mine in 
the near future. * * * 

301 



Madison C aw e i n 



191 1, August 27. 



Eric Pape: Your telegram [urging us to visit you] gave us all a 
great surprise. It came just after our return from Charlevoix and 
Mackinac, and Chicago where we saw the aviation meet — wonderful 
indeed. I have secured a drawing room on the Pennsylvania Railroad 
for Wednesday, and if all goes well we'll be with you Saturday next. 



191 1, September 17, Manchester, Massachusetts. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Glad to hear from you. We are 
the guests of Mr. Pape and having a good time. Go to Boston every 
now and then. But I love to walk in the woods here. There is a 
brown stream and a ruined mill I love to sit by. Have written a 
number of sonnets, as good if not better than the Annisquam ones. 
We return to New York next Sunday and home on the twenty-ninth. 



1911, October 21. 

Dr. Henry Van Dyke: My book [Poems] speaks so beauti- 
fully to me through you [a letter, by Henry Van Dyke, to the Book 
of Chosen Poems of my friend, Madison Cawein, October 16, 191 1] 
that I am scarcely able to recognize it as my child. It seems to have 
taken on a glory that was not there before you addressed it in lovely 
language. And through the praise which you have bestowed upon 
it, it has been made dearer, as a child might, through the worded 
admiration of a friend, to the heart of its father. 

I, too, would like to write to your book [The Poems of Henry 
Van Dyke], as you have written to mine. What a beautiful forest of 
wonderful things it is! — peopled here and there with edifices of 
imagination, and vocal with the music of immortal birds; "The Whip- 
poorwill" and "The Ruby-Crowned Kinglet," and most holy of all, 
"The Hermit-Thrush." Bees and birds and blossoms make it redo- 
lent and murmurous and lure one to wander on and on into another 
world not of the earth, but of the soul. It is a forest of fancy where 
one may lose oneself in the present or the long ago, following a lyric 
cry now, or the epic thunder of the waters of life. Gertrude has 
written you of how much she has enjoyed it. She and I have spoken 
of it, discussed it, and loved it together. It is a body of poetry, I 
believe, that will last and grow into the life of our literature, 
unquestionably. Like your stories, it contains nothing that is not vital 
and of value. It will establish you high in that place which you have 
labored for and desired so many years, — the high place of song, which 
so many long for, my friend, and so few ever attain. Very faithfully 
your friend, Madison Cawein. 

302 



A Posthumous Autobio graphy 

1912, January i. 

Miss Jessie B. Rittenhouse: Mrs. Cawein has finally persuaded 
me to come on with her to attend your reception and the Poetry 
Society's banquet on the twenty-third. * * * We are looking 
forward to meeting you again with our usual delight. Miss Sara 
Teasdale, from whom I hear occasionally, writes me that she intends 
coming on to your reception and the dinner. I am anxious to meet 
the young lady, who, I think, is writing exquisite verse. She will be 
heard from unquestionably, in the world of poetry, later on, as one of 
our greatest poets. * * * 

1912, January 21, New York. 

Eric Pape: Gertrude and I are in New York again. * * * 
On Thursday I leave for Philadelphia to attend the annual dinner 
given at the University Club by the National Institute of Arts and 
Letters; and on the twenty-sixth the open meeting of the Academy and 
National Institute held at Belleview-Stratford, morning and after- 
noon, when a gold medal is to be presented to the poet who, by the 
members of the Institute vote, is considered worthiest of that honor. 
I have no hope of receiving it, but I want to be present on that 
occasion and see to whom the gold medal is to be presented. * * * 

1912, January 25, Philadelphia. 

James Whitcomb Riley (a telegram) : Dear old boy, I want to 
be the first to congratulate you on receiving the gold medal for poetry. 
Great enthusiasm at Institute dinner over the award. Am proud of 
you over this national recognition of your genius. Madison Cawein. 

1912, January 30. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I cannot agree with you regarding the 
beauty of your friend. Her poetry is far more beautiful than she is, 
and it is good to see how she is appreciated by the poets and lovers 
of poetry. But how you could go raving wildly about her looks and 
her style simply beats me, my boy. Love certainly blinds us. But, 
as I remarked before, what she lacks in looks she makes up for in 
intellect. 

I left Gertrude in New York where she is devoting her time to 
music, and ran down to Philadelphia to see my sister whose death is 
expected any day. * * * j attended the banquet given by the 

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Madison C aw e i n 

two societies, The Academy and The National Institute of Arts and 
Letters, and voted with the others unanimously that the gold medal 
be bestowed upon James Whitcomb Riley, which it was, with 
acclamation. It is the crown for his life work — national recognition, 
as it were, by the greatest thinkers and workers of this country. He 
should feel proud of that medal, as doubtless he does, and should now 
be content to die, as perhaps he is. 

In New York at the Poetry Society I met all the poets, good and 
bad, in this country, and one or two from Ireland. I read a poem on 
that occasion and made a brief speech. But as a whole it is all very 
unsatisfactory, when you come to look back on it. * * * 

1912, March 10. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j ^^g invited two weeks ago to 
attend the Howells' Dinner given by George Harvey in New York. 
I did not have the money to go and so had to decline. I am sorry 
not to have been present, as Howells I consider the greatest of all our 
writers, and he has done more to encourage young authors than all 
the rest of the literati in the East put together. He is not afraid to 
praise where he thinks praise is due, and there is not an iota of envy 
in his generous heart for any poet or novelist, living or dead. * * * 

1912, March 18. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * f he Poetry Society is broadening 
out. It is becoming a power in the land, and I am glad. We may 
see quite a universal interest taken in poetry before we die. It is 
about time Ithink. 

Today is Preston's birthday. He is eight years old and happy 
as a lark. He will have his little boy friends to lunch today, and toys, 
ice-cream and cake and candy are the order for the day. Do you 
know that he is writing verse? He comes from school every day 
nearly with a new rhyme in his little head, and he taps it out on the 
typewriter, too. His rhymes are very simple and sweet. 

Next Monday night the Louisville Literary Club is to do honor 
to Madison Cawein. It is the silver anniversary of the publication 
of my first volume, Blooms of the Berry. I have sent the president of 
the club a poem of yours to me, which will be read on that occasion. 
I don't think I shall be there, as I know I should be fearfully 
embarrassed. * * * 

1 9 12, March 20. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: My sister died yesterday at four P. M. [in 
Philadelphia]. Her husband is bringing the body on for burial here. 
Friday will be the funeral. She sufifered, poor child, but now she 
is at peace. * * * 

304 



A P sthumous Autobiography 

1912, March 24. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Your letter is beautiful and consoling. It 
is full of fine things, and Jack, Lilian's husband, wants to thank you, 
as well as do I, for all the consoling things in that letter. * * * 
Now sister is at peace, sleeping by the side of mother whom she loved 
so, and missed so since her departure just a year from the day that 
she herself received the great call. 

At my request the Louisville Literary Club's celebration of my 
birthday and the publication of my first book, twenty-five years ago, 
will not be postponed but will take place tomorrow night. I do 
wish things were different so that you, next to Dr. Cottell, my 
dearest and most devoted friend, could be present. But fate has 
willed it otherwise. But you, you of the Old Guard, will be there in 
spirit, I know, and in a way, will be there in fact, as a very beautiful 
poem of yours, a tribute to me, written some time ago, will be read 
on that occasion. Some sort of a silver piece in commemoration of 
the affair is to be presented to me. * * * 

1912, March 30. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I could not express to you how overwhelmed 
I was at the ovation extended me by the eminent men and women of 
Kentucky at the celebration given by the Louisville Literary Club. 
And still it goes on. * * * Everybody was delighted and every- 
body most enthusiastic. The Old Guard was well represented in 
William Dean Howells, Dr. Cottell and yourself. Oh, my dear 
friend, how humble it all makes me feel. I felt more like weeping 
than laughing. It was all so beautiful! And the cup is a perfectly 
wonderful one, and one that shall go down in our family from gener- 
ation to generation. Dr. Cottell distinguished himself and covered 
himself with honor as well as glory. A kinder, a more loving friend, 
man or poet never had. He is waiting for me now. He sends you 
his love. Your friend, Madison Cawein. 

1912, March 31. 

James Whitcomb Riley: I have not had time to write you how 
much your letter to my twenty-fifth anniversary-of-the-Blooms-of- 
the-Berry-celebration meant to me. It was just like you; and what 
you had to say went right to my heart. 

Young E. Allison was to take a prominent part in the affair, but 
was compelled to give up at the last hour. He sent a characteristic- 
ally beautiful letter, which was read by the master of ceremonies. 
Allison and I are going to descend upon you some time this spring — 
that is, if old man winter will ever give the fair maid a chance to show 
the hem of her skirt and her high-heeled shoes. * * * 

305 



Madison C aw e i n 



1912, April 4. 



Eric Pape: Your letter to hand regarding the ovation and the 
crowning of me "Poet Laureate of Kentucky." Yes, it was a great 
occasion and echoes of it are coming in constantly from New York to 
California. A note came this morning from dear old Charles Rann 
Kennedy, congratulating me. I read his play, The Terrible Meek, 
and should love very much to see it played. He is a great old fellow. 
I love him — but who does not? 

My book — The Poet, the Fool and the Faeries — is in the hands of 
the printers now. Before June I hope to mail you a copy. It is 
going to be the best volume I ever put out, and I hope it will sell, for 
although I have been made the recipient of great honors, finances are 
not as good with me as you may suppose. Yes, I am still looking for 
a good job. I would not hesitate to accept one if it were offered to 
me. * * * Some day, however, my poetry may bring me in 
enough to live on — to buy bread and meat and to pay taxes — but just 
at present it does not. Gertrude is absorbed in music. She intends 
singing in concert, and has an engagement with Damrosch this spring 
to try her voice out. It may terminate in an engagement. * * * 

1912, April 9. 

Stark Young: I hope these beautiful April days are inspiring 
you to work. I am not getting out too often into the woods and, 
with lead-pencil and note-book, jotting down the thoughts which 
must come to one when in a receptive mood. We have some lovely 
country in the neighborhood of Louisville, and I don't know what I 
should do without it. I do nearly all my work in the woods, lonely 
lanes and roads, where one can walk and think, holding communion 
with the ineffable and the unutterable in nature. * * * j envy 
you your summer trip abroad. How I should love to be in England, 
not London, during the Summer. It would simply be perfect, I 
imagine. There is a number of poets over there, two of them 
especially, whom I should love to meet — Edmund Gosse and Alfred 
Noyes, with whom I have had some correspondence; also Arthur C. 
Benson, a fine poet. * * * 

1912, May 2. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * I do wish I could get something 
else to do. It's hard though to find anything adequate or that pays 
one these times. My work is appreciated and bought, but not to an 
extent that would support me. Far from it. With all the honors 
and tributes heaped upon me I remain as poor as ever. * * * 

306 



A Posthumous Autoh io gr aphy 

1912, May 13. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j thought you would like the poems 
[The Poet, the Fool and the Faeries]. I do think that this [forthcom- 
ing] book is one of my best, if not the best. I have put three years 
work on it, and I think it shows. I don't think I shall ever be able 
to do anything finer. I am getting old and tired. I would not mind 
giving up now; if I had sufficient income for the rest of my days I 
might do some more work, better work. But the outlook is damnable 
for pecuniary returns, and it seems harder every year to make a dollar. 
I don't know what I'll do eventually * * * 



1912, May 23. 

Dr. Henry Van Dyke: I want to thank you for the John 
Bigelow pamphlet. Your address is noble and beautiful. I enjoyed 
it all the more since all this year, so far, some impending disaster seems 
hanging over my head and the heads of those I love. Perhaps this 
feeling of gloom, which has entered Gertrude's merry soul and 
clouded it also, is merely the result of several deaths in my immediate 
family. 

But the cloud is lifting. I hear Gertrude at the piano singing a 
high-hearted lark-like song — the first time I have heard her for two 
months, and it sounds like better times a-coming. * * * 



1912, June 27. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Your letter just received, and as I am not 
busy with a thing I thought I'd write to you. I am still feeling 
badly. A wretched cough that will not away, and pains and aches 
in my abdomen, from so much coughing I suppose. I have recovered 
my voice, at last, and am feeling some better, although far from well. 
Despondency, too, has settled upon me like a pall. When will it 
lift and all be sunny and bright as once it was? You know, since 
mother and sister and my cousin Fred passed away [Frederick W. 
Cawein died February 18, 191 2] I sometimes find myself longing for 
the great change myself. It is wrong, I know, for there are Gertrude 
and Preston whom I should hate to leave and it is not fair to them to 
wish to die. But everything in this life seems to me to be arranged 
so badly, so miserably. So many people have so much more than 
they need and so many more have so little. It is unjust. 

But enough of this. We are leading a quiet, uneventful life. 
I have finally got things adjusted with the publisher and the The 
Poet, the Fool and the Faeries is going forward. It will not be out 

307 



Madison C a w e i 



n 



until September though, which is as it should be. Recently I had 
two new faery poems taken by The Century; one last week, also, a 
long one, over a hundred lines, called "Treasure Trove," by Harper's 
Weekly. It is the kind you like: pirates and pirate gold; mystery and 
death. It's a thunderous piece — a ballad piece — the best I ever 
wrote, and they paid me $50.00 for it. Another poem for which I 
received $15.00 this week was taken by the Youth's Companion. * * * 



1912, July 16. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * \Ye are remaining at home this 
year and just nursing our worries and troubles. Can't afford to take 
a trip, that's the whole truth of the matter; and I see no reason why 
one, with a home like ours, should want to take a trip. One is always 
more comfortable at home, if one has a nice one like ours is in St. 
James Court. * * * j ^j-ite a few poems every now and then 
and have one or two accepted occasionally. All is quiet and the 
sun shines hot in the old Kentucky home. * * * 



1912, July 27. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j am writing an ode on The 
Republic now, which I intend to be a protest against the attitude of the 
times, public and political, and a sort of appeal to God and the world 
of the lowly and the wise, for patience, etc. I think it is going to be 
a good poem, but don't know yet. * * * Things are monotonous 
as ever here. Nothing doing. I write and wait, and wait and write. 
All seems dull and dead. I had two more poems accepted last week 
by the North American Review * * * two poems also taken by 
the Bookman. We are well, but bored to death with waiting for 
things to come about. Preston plays and has a good time every 
day. * * * 



1912, October id. 

Stark Young: I am particularly pleased to learn of your success 
in having your new volume of poems placed and am looking forward 
to its appearance. I am sure it is good, and I am impatient to see 
what you have dedicated to me, with its fascinating title. Do you 
know The Poetry Review, published in London? It is an able monthly 
magazine devoted entirely to poetry. This month's number is 
given over to American poets; last month's was to French, and next 
month's will be to German. There is quite a revival of interest in 

308 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

poetry in England, judging by the amount of space given to the poets 
in the magazines. In this country it would be impossible to get such 
long poems as "The Everlasting Mercy," and "The Window in the 
By-Street" taken by a magazine and paid for. They do better and 
more things for poetry in England than they do here. 

I get more and more disgusted with the outlook — the publishing 
and paying outlook for poetry — every year I live. Nevertheless I 
keep on writing.* * * 



1912, October 12. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: What you say about Riley's poems is very 
true. I used to be greatly amused by his humorous poems, when I 
was twenty years younger, but — ah me! mirth vanishes with the 
years. The nightingale's song outlasts that of the cuckoo. Not 
for me any more those humorous rhymes; give me the deep clear 
undiluted wells of Parnassus. It is the only well to drink of. But I 
owed something to Riley. In my youthful days he extended a hand 
of encouragement to me and praised my work, recognizing and 
appreciating my serious poems. It was twenty-two years ago ; think of 
it — almost a lifetime. Riley knows good verse when he reads it, too. 
But he is no scholar, no academician, like those pragmatic poets of the 
East who set themselves up as the Lords of Poetry here. * * * 
[This letter was written a few days after Cawein returned from 
Indianapolis, where he had gone to help celebrate Riley's birthday.] 



1912, November 10. 

Stark Young: I am glad, very glad, that the poems [The Poet, 
the Fool and the Faeries] have appealed to you so strongly. My heart 
and soul were in the writing of them; and all of them, without an 
exception, were written in the hills and woods hereabouts, or in New 
England woods and gardens, or by the sea. It seems that I no longer 
can work indoors, except to elaborate, revise and correct. If I can 
not get out into the hills, among the trees, I can do nothing — my 
brain is blank, the muse is unmovable elsewhere. In the second 
part of the book — "Character and Episode" — are some dramatic 
lyrics which I consider a departure from my usual nature studies, and, 
in a way, some of the best things I have done. Professor Mark 
Liddell * * * considers "The Common Earth" [the first part 
of the book] the best thing I have ever written. I am almost of a 
mind with him. But then a poet is not the one to speak authorita- 
tively of his own work. "Robber Gold," "The House of Pride," 
"The House of Night" and "Crime" ["Guilt"], I fancy I like better 

309 



Madison C aw e i n 

than some of the poems in the first part of the book. "The Dryads" 
is my favorite above them all. You must, some time, see the beech 
forest, wild and primeval, in which I wrote the greater part of that 
little play. * * * 

1912, November 23. 

Stark Young: * * * There is a Jewish Rabbi, a fine 
intellect here, who is to write an article about my work and myself 
for a Yiddish paper published in New York. It all seems so strange. 
He comes today to interview me. I know German, but not Yiddish. 
He wants to read the article to me. I shall let him, of course, but do 
not expect to understand one tenth of it. 



* * * 



1912, December 16. 

John F. Behney: * * * The break in the stock market has 
simply done for me, and I have lost thousands. I have a hundred 
and fifty shares of Tippecanoe stock that pays me dividends of 7 
per cent per annum, and I want to sell it or borrow on it; but nobody 
is buying stocks or lending money on them. 

Preston got your box of candy on Thanksgiving and he enjoyed 
it, and we helped him to enjoy it. We are all well. It looks like a 
wretched Christmas for Gertrude and myself; but Preston is to have 
a fine one as usual, but no tree and no Aunt Lilie to look to for a box. 
We are an unlucky and desolate lot. I wish you joy and success, 
however, for the coming year. * * * 



1912, December 20. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Your lovely little Christmas gift delighted 
all of us. * * * I thank you, too, for your good letter which is 
so full of sympathy. I have written to several personal friends for 
suggestions as to what to do, or as to an opening in something, but so 
far I have only received letters of surprise, astonishment and inability 
to understand how or why it should be so. Well, it is thus. Now 
what am I to do and who's going to give me a job? * * * 



1912, December 25. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Your letter, so enthusiastic over Marlowe, 
pleased me very much. I sent Dr. Cottell a copy also. I don't 
think many moderns know Marlowe. But he is as much worth 

310 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

knowing as Shakespeare. His "Faustus" has some of the greatest 
lines in it that English poetry knows. * * * Christmas is festal 
here. Preston has three railroad trains. He is as busy as a railroad 
magnate managing them. Also a castle, soldiers, Indians, books, 
houses, etc., etc. He is as happy as a lark and makes everybody 
else so. * * * 

1912, December 29. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Well, here we are on the verge of another 
year, and it finds me perplexed and anxious and poorer than I have 
ever been. I don't know where to turn or what to do. God may 
direct me later on and bring something my way eventually. In the 
meantime I am writing verse with a message of hope and love and 
friendship, when I don't feel any of these have much existence at the 
present time; not in my heart, at any rate. Miss Fortune seems to 
have taken up lodgings in my home and has unstrapped her valise 
and trunk, and is determined to stay, in spite of all my efforts to 
bundle her out. * * * 

1913. January 10. 

Stark Young: * * * "The Seven Kings and the Wind" 
[dedicated to Madison Cawein] — a great title worthy of Maeter- 
linck — is the most mystifying of all the seven playlets in your Addio, 
Madretta and Other Plays. It is symbolic, of course. * * * j 
like "The Star in the Trees" most. All of them, however, are worthy 
of keen attention, and I shall read them over at once. * * * 

1913, February 7. 

Stark Young: * * * Qn Monday last we had a great snow 
storm and I wish you could have seen our Court [St. James Court] 
and the neighboring park [Central Park] we walked through last 
summer. How beautiful! Every twig and tree loaded down with 
immaculate white. It was a faery landscape, wonderful, mysterious, 
the sun making it shimmer and shine with a magic unsurpassed by 
anything I ever saw before. And this lasted three days, as it froze 
hard on the boughs after the storm was over. * * * 

1913, February 27. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * You will find a little poem of 
mine in Scribner's Magazine for March. It is called "The Old 

311 



Madison C aw e i n 

Remain," and I think it will find favor with you. I wrote it right 
out of my heart. I felt every word and line I wrote in that poem. 
I was sad, depressed, overwhelmed. * * * 

1913, April 15. 

Dr. Henry Van Dyke: About the first of May I hope to 
send you a little book of homespun verse — called The Republic after 
its introductory poem, an ode published in last month's Forum, — 
containing a number of poems, all American. I have taken the liberty 
of dedicating this book of simple American poems to you for the high 
standing of excellence that you have maintained through the last 
quarter of a century both in poetry a^d prose in American literature. 

I suppose you have returned from your trip to California, which, 
I am sure, you enjoyed. We have not been away from Louisville now 
for over a year. Things have gone bad for me in a financial way, and 
I am at my wits' end as to what to do. Gertrude has been ill for 
a month and more, with the grippe and general depression. Poor 
girl; she wants to do so much and can do so little. Preston, too, is 
just recovering from quite a spell of sickness — the chicken-pox. 
But otherwise he is happy and full of play. * * * 



1913, April 16. 

Walter Malone: I am in great trouble. Reverses, financial, 
have come upon me that make it necessary for me to seek employ- 
ment — something otherwise than poetry to do. No one but Mr. 
Noyes can make a living from the writing of poetry. I have tried to, 
but the cost of living is too high. I must find something else to do. 
Newspaper work I am not fitted for; I know nothing at all about it. 
I can write poetry — God, what a commentary on inability that is! 
Could there be anything worse in the eyes of the world! If I had 
devoted myself to medicine or to the law for the thirty years I have 
devoted myself to poetry, I would not be writing you thus, but be 
comfortably fixed in the goods of the world. 

You know how I was situated when I first met you — in a pool- 
room here in Louisville. That business disgusted me and I took to 
buying and selling stocks, and did well for twenty years. Last year 
and this one tell a different tale. Wall Street has finally gotten me 
and my little bank account, as it always gets the small moneyed man 
who has a family to support, and especially the man who has aesthetic 
ambitions. 

If you know of anything or of anyone who could help me to some 
sort of a position, political or otherwise, will you kindly let me know? 
Thanking you beforehand, I am your friend, Madison Cawein. 

312 



A Posthumous Au tob io graf) hy 

1913, April 18. 

Mrs. John L. Woodbury, Secretary: Mrs. Cawein and I accept 
with pleasure the invitation of the Literature Club to be present on 
April twenty-fifth at the presentation of the bust to the Louisville Free 
Public Library. My little son, Preston, accepts with thanks your 
request that he participate in the presentation ceremonies. 

We all feel honored and delighted with the favors the Literature 
Club has heaped upon me and would take this occasion to thank 
you, one and all, for what you have done out of admiration for 
my work and appreciation of poetry. Nothing like this, the public 
presentation of a bronze bust of a living poet or author, to a library 
and a city, has ever occurred in Louisville before, probably in no city 
before. This is something to boast of to future generations. It is a 
distinction, something that the community we live in cannot and 
never will forget. 

I thank you individually and collectively, also every man and 
woman outside the Literature Club, who contributed a dollar to 
the bust. Very sincerely yours, Madison Cawein. 

1913, April 19. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: The woods are beautiful now. These ideal 
days of April are just the thing for vim, but spring makes me sad, 
remembering springs past and friends that are gone. * * * 
This week I had another book. Minions of the Moon, accepted by 
Stewart and Kidd Company, of Cincinnati, for publication in the 
fall. It is to be a Christmas book. This makes two books of mine 
they have taken to publish at their own expense. * * * 

1913, April 20. 

Eric Pape: I don't know what I'm going to do. Do you? 
I inclose a little note which will tell you I'm to be honored, publicly, 
with a bust, by the city of Louisville. They still think I write poetry, 
you see, and show their appreciation in this way. I'd rather have 
a pension any old day than a bust. But I must take the things the 
Lord sends — and in Him I trust. * * * 

1913, April 25. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: This afternoon at five o'clock the bust of 
Madison Cawein is to be presented to Louisville and placed and 
unveiled in the Public Library, the Mayor accepting it for the city. 
Preston is to officiate as the unveiler. I have not seen the bronze 
yet, but I hear it is a fine likeness. 

313 



Madison C aw e i n 

Tomorrow morning Gertrude and I go to Cincinnati for a day or 
two. John Kidd, the head of the Stewart and Kidd Company 
secured for us seats at the Grand Opera to be held there Saturday 
night. My cousin, Marie Cavan, that is Mary Cawein, sings with 
Mary Garden. She is a member of the Chicago Grand Opera Com- 
pany. I expect to meet her for the first time in my life. I have 
corresponded with her, and imagine she is an interesting girl. She 
is still in her twenties. 

I wrote Judge Walter Malone, of Memphis, about a job and he 
advised me to apply to the Government for a position, and that he 
will use his influence. But I don't know what sort of a job to apply 
for. Do you? He thinks President Wilson would be glad to place 
me in some good position in spite of the fact that I am, or have been, 
a Republican. I don't know. What would you advise? * * * 

1913, May 4. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j ^m now trying my hand at 
scenarios for the moving pictures. I have finished one and started 
another. I hope I'll be able to make good at these. [Mr. Cawein 
told me he had submitted and sold only one scenario, and that the 
editors having taken all the poetry out of it, he declined to let his 
name appear as author. As far as I know the scenario was never 
produced.] * * * 

1913, May 7. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * The bronze bust is a fine likeness. 
The lips are a little too thick, perhaps; the mouth is correct as to 
shape, however. There is no "cupid-bow" effect as The Louisville 
Herald makes it. That is due to the print. It is a great honor to 
have it erected as it is, while I am still in the land of the living. * * * 

I shall try hard for a government place. * * * i have 
written to Roosevelt at the suggestion of Walter Malone, and shall 
write to William Jennings Bryan, for a consulship, as soon as he 
returns to Washington. I have selected Bermuda as the nearest and 
most likely. I don't know whether or not it is vacant now, or whether 
it is likely to be. I have written for it, however. I would rather get 
a place in the United States, if I could. * * * 

1913, May 13. 

Charles Hamilton Musgrove: * * * Xhe book is splendid. 
[Pan and Aeolus — Poems, by Charles Hamilton Musgrove, dedicated 

314 



A P osthumous Autobiography 

to Madison Cawein, 1913.] I read it last night. There are poems 
in this book that will make your reputation. A number of them are 
as fine as any thing that has ever been done in verse. * * * 

1913, May 20. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j ]^^^ ^ j^^^-g from Bryan's private 
secretary, and it sounds favorable. I have gotten busy with a num- 
ber of friends who are writing or going to write to Vice-President 
Marshall and OUie M. James, and to Secretary Bryan and President 
Wilson in my behalf. * * * * Preston has just gotten over 
being vaccinated. He was sick, but is all right now. Gertrude, too, 
is well, but worried, as I am, about affairs. We are trusting in the 
Lord to pull us through all right. That is, I am trusting and working 
at the same time. Gertrude hasn't much faith in anything but 
Luck. Well, Luck may look our way some day again. I don't 
know. Anyhow, I receive lots of public notice now, if nothing else. 
I enclose a clipping from yesterday's Louisville Herald. Duncan 
Clark, a poet himself, is editor and did me up in style in his columns 
yesterday. * * * 

1913, May 28. 

Dr. Henry Van Dyke: I have been ill, worried and despond- 
ent, and in no fit condition to write to you. However, today I did 
brace up and sent you the first copy of The Republic that has gone 
out of this house. I am sorry the book is not a better one than it is. 
But I am experimenting, you see. Some of the verse in this book is 
poetry and some of it is merely verse. Some of it is as good as my 
best and some as bad as my worst. It is the sort of a book the public 
likes and will buy and read. I have another book. Minions of the 
Moon, that the same firm in Cincinnati is publishing, coming out 
for Xmas. This book is in my best vein, I think — all poetry, if I 
am not mistaken. * * * j ^^ trying for a consulate. Thomas 
Nelson Page is helping me. I have to do something, you see. Page 
has done wonders so far. * * * 

1913, May 31. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j ^^^ working for that consulate. 
Thomas Nelson Page's letter to me is perfectly beautiful. He went 
personally and saw OUie M. James and Secretary Bryan, and pointed 
out to them and other senators what literary men had done in the 
consular service: Hays, Howells, Taylor, Hawthorne and Lowell. 
The consular position comes under the Civil Service regulations and 
rules and requirements, and in that examination is where I'll fall 
down. I fear. * * * 

315 



Madison C a w e i n 

1913, June 4. 

Miss Harriet Monroe: * * * Neihardt's "Death of Agrip- 
pina," in the May number of your magazine [Poetry, a Magazine of 
Verse] is the best thing you have pubHshed so far, in my opinion. 
The less of that Ezra Pound stuff you put in your pages the better 
it will be for the future of Poetry. Walt Whitman gone mad, without 
the grace and sound common sense of Whitman to redeem the plati- 
tude and lack of poetic form and inspiration. A boy could write 
such stuff by the yard without any mental effort whatever. May 
God help us, who love real poetry, if this is the kind of verse we are 
to be doomed to read in the next decade. * * * 

1913, June 12. 

Miss Harriet Monroe: I return, as you requested, the clipping 
from the Chicago Post. Floyd Dell, the editor, whose verses I have 
seen occasionally, is just the man to admire Ezra Pound's work. He 
is young, too, and full of fire, desirous of smashing precedents in 
poetry, as well as poets themselves of established reputations. 
I have seen some of his sledge hammer reviews of such poets. Time 
will work the whole matter out justly, I think. I am very willing to 
trust to its judgment. I cannot bring my poetical faculties into 
sympathy with that kind of work, nor with this new poet's from 
India, that everybody is praising now; nor with several others whose 
work is more like prose than poetry — that poet's, for instance, whose 
long "poem," "The Green Cage," appears in the June Atlantic, 
though I must admit the thoughts are startHng and often the wording 
is beautiful. I still maintain that form and rhythm and music are 
absolutely necessary to the making of good poetry. Yours cordially, 
Madison Cawein. 

I9i3» June 19. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j have lots of letters from people 
anxious to help me. All of them are most friendly and kind. I hear 
nothing from the big guns. I had a letter from Dr. Van Dyke 
the other day offering his assistance, which of course I accepted. He 
has been appointed minister to the Netherlands, and Thomas Nelson 
Page is ambassador to Italy, and Meredith Nicholson is minister to 
Portugal. So you see the President favors the literary men still. 
* * * I have nothing new to write. The hot weather kind o' 
knocks the props from under me. * * * 

George Grey Barnard, the great sculptor, Eric Pape's brother- 
in-law, is in town. He has been employed by the government to 

316 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

do a statue of Abraham Lincoln, and is down here to find a model 
to pose for him. He is a brilliant man, and most enthusiastic about 
art and poetry. He is offering ten dollars a day for a good model, 
and advertising for one in the newspapers. I told him he would 
have to go to the mountains and find his model there. He is going, 
for he is a man that brooks no delay and is filled with energy. * * * 



1913, July i. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * i had a letter yesterday from 
Swager Sherley, our congressman, in which he speaks of an ambassa- 
dorship for me. He and William Jennings Bryan had a long talk 
together about me, and this was the result. I don't know where they 
will send me, but I fear that the expenses of being minister are so 
great that I shall have to refuse on account of lack of funds. The 
salary attached to such a position is inadequate, they say, and often 
the rent of the house for a year takes the entire amount of the salary. 
It's a great honor, however. I can't see how I could make both 
ends meet if I'd accept, if offered to me. I can't afford with my 
small means to undertake anything that is going to require more 
than my income from my position. * * * 



1913, July 9. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I am copying some poems for a little book 
of nature poems I am getting ready for the American Book Company, 
for use in schools. I don't know whether they will accept my book or 
not when it is ready but, at their suggestion, I am at work on it. 
Nature work in public schools has become quite a factor lately, and 
it would be quite a factor if I succeeded in placing a series of Cawein 
Nature Books with the American Book Company. I am going up 
to Cincinnati the end of July to see Mr. W. T. H. Howe about the 
book and deliver the first manuscript to him. * * * 



1913, July 20. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Gertrude and I are going to Cin- 
cinnati, for two or three days, on Thursday coming. I am taking my 
MS. of "Vacation Days" with me to show to Mr. Howe of the Ameri- 
can Book Company. It is a compilation of some of my nature poems 
connected, or linked together, with a boy's story of a vacation in the 
country hereabouts [near Brownsboro, Kentucky]. It is reminiscent 
of my own boyhood. I don't know how it will do for schools, but I 

317 



Madison C aw e i n 

got the book together for Mr. Howe who thinks of making a school 
book of it. [The title was changed to The Poet and Nature and the 
Morning Road, and published by John P. Morton & Company at 
their own expense.] 

What do you think of the new laureate, Robert Bridges? 
A fine selection, I think. I have always loved his poetry. That poem 
of his called "A Song" is beautiful, one of the most beautiful in the 
English Language. * * * y\nd then his poem on "A Dead Child," 
is wonderfully beautiful. The wiseacres of the Eastern papers 
and magazines, so cock-sure that Alfred Noyes or W. B. Yeats, or 
some other smasher of Classical English would be made poet laureate, 
are completely confounded. They never even dreamed this dis- 
tinguished, retiring man, Bridges, would be made poet laureate. 
A fine selection, a poet worthy of all honor, and a worthy successor of 
Tennyson and Wordsworth. He is nearly seventy years old and with 
the exception of a few admirers, has, like myself and other humble 
poets, written and lived in obscurity, published his books at his own 
expense, in limited editions, or having them published by friends at 
their expense. But sometimes merit is appreciated and found out 
by a reluctant government. * * * 



1913, July 24. 

Charles G. Roth: * * * You say you look through my 
books for reminiscences of our boyhood's play place. Rock Springs. 
Well, this little book, The Republic, is full of them. I'll point out two 
poems you must read and then close your eyes and think back. The 
first is "Happiness," page 25. You remember Owlet's Roost. You 
remember the pond where we used to shoot frogs. After reading 
"Happiness" turn to page 62 and read "The Road Back" and then 
stay with me a while in The Land o' Dreams. "The Briar Rose" is 
another one of 'em, and also "An Idyll," on page 38. Well, the book 
is full of 'em. 

Gertrude and Preston, our son who is nine years old now, and I 
send love to both you and your wife. We'll never forget that hour or 
so we spent with you at the old St. Nicholas Hotel, between trains in 
Cincinnati, three or four years ago. Your cousin, Madison Cawein. 



1913, September 10, 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Nothing new has transpired since 
writing you. I am trying to possess my soul in patience until I 
hear something definite from Washington. I am writing in the 

318 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

meantime and trying to get the poems taken by the magazines. My 
new book, Minions of the Moon, will be ready next week, I think. 
But the trouble about all my books is they sell so few and the royalties 
are really nothing. A poet ought never to marry. Being a poet, 
it's the mistake of my life. Nothing but worry and the grind of 
keeping a family up and enough money to live respectably on. No, 
a poet ought never to marry. When he does he marries trouble 
along with the girl, and when a baby comes there is more trouble. 
We are all well. Preston is going to school; he is in the fourth grade, 
doing long division and fractions. He is a bright boy, if I do say so. 



1913, September 25. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * No, don't say anything to that 
friend of yours, of ours, about my being hard up. He's like all the 
other rich bugs in that respect — "Sorry, but I can't help you. Hard 
up myself." That's what the rich bugs always say to the poor 
bug — nothing doing. But I'll win out yet, some way, somehow. 
The devil's loose in the world and playing mischief with the peace of 
mind of a lot of us. He'll be caged some day, and then look out. 
In the meantime I am writing my poems and waiting, waiting. 
Patience is a great blessing for those who have it, but at times I 
can't but rebel against the thorns and burrs of adversity that strew 
the mortal highway. * * * 



1913, October 7. 

R. E. Lee Gibson : I have no news for you at all, except that my 
book, new book, Minions of the Moon, has failed to put in an appear- 
ance as yet, and that I have heard nothing, absolutely nothing, from 
Washington. I suppose nothing will come out of my application for 
a consulate. I sent you this morning a copy of Poetry Magazine 
published in Chicago. It contains a poem of mine, "The Old Home," 
in my usual style. 

Preston and Gertrude are well. Preston is growing and going 
to the ward schools, fighting his way along and in fine fettle. A fine 
boy — big and robust — and the consolation of our lives. He is always 
interested in something — ducks, chameleons and kittens. But the 
ducks, I think, have his preference. He is a little darling, a straight, 
fine, good-looking youngster whom I love to take in the woods with 
me now and then to hunt mushrooms and pawpaws. He loves 
nature. * * * 

319 



Madison C aw e i n 
1913, October 13. 

Eric Paper * * * The world, I see, is treating you beauti- 
fully. I am glad of it. You should be happy. Success like yours 
as an artist comes to few. I congratulate you on your exhibit [in 
Boston]. You can paint, old boy, no doubt of it. You are a famous 
man. * * * You are a great artist. I said this before I ever 
met you, and I say it now with emphasis. Go on ! Do ! Accomplish ! 
Achieve! * * * 

1913, October 18. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * We are still waiting for something 
to happen, something good, I mean, but it never does happen. Not 
a word from Washington, and I suppose they have forgotten all 
about me up there, doing all they can to pass the tariff and currency 
bills. * * * 

1913, November 7. 

Stark Young: * * * j ^ig^ I could have been with you in 
Greece — in the Vale of Tempe at any rate. It must have been 
perfect. But I suppose I shall never go abroad. Things are not 
favorable. Finances go from bad to worse, and poetry brings 
nothing in — a few dollars at the most. It is true publishers publish 
my books [some of them] at their own expense, but the return in 
royalties amount to very little, very little indeed. I suppose I am 
fortunate to find a publisher and ought to be satisfied. But a poet 
has to live the same as a bricklayer, you know. I agree with you 
entirely as to the poetry that is finding most favor in this country 
at the present time. Enterprise, or progress, seems to be the subject 
matter of most of the poetry written now. Hardly that, now, 
either; more attention is being paid to the prostitute and the white 
slave. Little music or beauty in any of it. * * * 

1913, November 19. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I just returned from Chicago a day or two 
ago. I had a great time. Harrison S. Morris, who invited me and 
paid all my expenses, was perfectly grand to me. We attended a 
joint meeting of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the 
American Academy of Arts and Letters. We were entertained 
royally and had a great audience at the open meeting in the Art 

320 



A Posthumous Autob io gr a phy 

Institute. My poem "The Song of Songs" [especially written for the 
occasion] went off all right and received much applause. * * * One 
club after another vied to do us honor, feasting us and showing us all 
sorts of attention. Champagne simply flowed. Indeed it was a 
glorious victory for the West which outdid the East by about one 
hundred to one in hospitality. * * * 

1913, November 21. 

Honorable Secretary of the Authors' Club, London: After careful 
consideration and the reading of various papers by English writers 
in the various English reviews, such as the one on American Art in the 
current number of the English Review, and observing the general 
attitude of them all to American poetry, I have come to the con- 
clusion that under the circumstances I can no longer remain a member 
of the Authors' Club and retain my self respect as an American poet 
and citizen. I therefore, with regret, hereby tender my resignation to 
the Authors' Club and beg to remain with respect, very truly yours, 
Madison Cawein. 

1913, November 24. 

Miss Jessie B. Rittenhouse: Your little book of selections 
[The Little Book of Modern Verse] came to us last week, and Gertrude 
and I have been enjoying it ever since its arrival. I think that you 
were very happy in making your selections and in including the poets 
you did include. I notice that you omitted several good friends 
of mine, however, which I wonder at. Mr. Robert U. Johnson, 
R. W. Gilder, and Harrison S. Morris. The last, I think, has done some 
wonderful sonnets in his Madonna and Other Poems, and in his last 
volume published about two years ago by The Century Company. 
But you know best about their exclusion. 

Gertrude is going to write a paper for her Club, The Womans' 
Club, here in Louisville, and is rejoicing over the book which she will 
use in preparing her article. It is a lovely little volume and the 
arrangement of the poems as you have made it, is very charming. The 
poem of Riley's that you use at the end is a good colophon and the 
opening poem by Bliss Carman is, in my opinion, the best one 
Carman ever wrote. I wish you had included more of this type of 
poetry and given us little, less, or nothing of the type of "Da Leetla 
Boy" by Daly, whose poems I do not consider literature in spite of 
what you people think of them in New York and Philadelphia, and 
despite the fact that Kennerly gave him a prize in the Lyric Year. 
All in all, however, the book is fine to have, and I rejoice in it and in 
your having done it. Gertrude does also and sends her love and 
thanks. Your friend, Madison Cawein. 

321 



Madison Cawein 
1913, December 15. 

Algernon Rose, Honorable Secretary, Authors' Club, London: 
Kindly permit me to recall my resignation from the Authors' Club. 
It was foolish of me to let my irritation over an article in the English 
Review of November last lead me to resign from a club like the Authors' 
Club, which has always treated with kindness and magnanimity 
American Art and Letters. 

The insult in the article in the English Review, upon the ability 
of our poet, essayist, and diplomat, James Russell Lowell, filled me 
with such indignation at the time I read this irresponsible article 
that I could do nothing else, it seemed to me, at that time, but cut 
away from England completely. 

I was wrong, and am sorry for the haste in writing the Club as 
I did, and herewith withdraw my resignation, and remain, faithfully 
yours, Madison Cawein. 



1913, December 16. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * By the way, talking of money, 
Preston and I made a raise last week. We sold five autograph 
volumes of James Whitcomb Riley to a Philadelphia rare-book 
buyer for $150.00. Think of it! One copy wasn't even a Riley 
book, but a little story called The Tailor of Gloucester which Riley 
sent Preston in 1907, inscribed with a little poem addressed "To my 
long-invisible playmate, Preston H. Cawein," and followed by a 
little poem. Preston got $50.00 in gold for it, of which he gave his 
mother $5.00 and put the rest in bank. Quite a Christmas gift for 
us, and it helps out, I can tell you. I also had poems taken by 
The North American Review, and Scribner's Magazine and Youth's 
Companion. * * * 



1914, January i. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: How glad it makes me feel to write 1914 
above there! I think 1913 proved itself to be the worst hoodoo 
year the world has known this century. May we have no more of 
them is my devout wish. * * * i mailed you a small new booklet, 
a brochure, a new poem of mine published by the Forest Craft Guild, 
of Grand Rapids, Michigan, called The Days of Used to Be. This 
booklet is one of the three I got out for Christmas, all beautifully 
adorned, colored by hand, and attractive in many ways. The other 
two are Christmas Rose and Leaf and Whatever the Path. 

322 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

I have received a summons to Washington, I beUeve I told you, 
to stand a Civil Service examination on the nineteenth; but I don't 
think I'll go. The examination is too hard, and I have no time to 
prepare myself for it. [And thus ended Mr. Cawein's efforts to procure 
a government appointment.] * * * 



1914, January 7. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j f^^id myself worried as to the 
future. I wish to God I was like the "niggers" and didn't look ahead! 
They are the happiest people in the world. They never worry about 
tomorrow as the white folks do. It seems to me that bills never 
cease falling, falling like the snows of February. And where to get 
the money to pay them is the question. I have been trying to sell 
our house, but nobody wants it. We keep well, however, and Gertrude 
and Preston are happy. I do not bother them with my troubles. 
We took Preston the other night to see the Stratford-on-Avon Players 
in Hamlet. He was wild about it. I, too, thought it a finer per- 
formance than Sothern and Marlowe could put up. I met F. R. 
Benson, the star, several times and introduced Preston and Gertrude 
to him. He is a fine appreciative spirit. * * * 



1914, January 21. 

Gale Young Rice: In ^/ the World's Heart is some of the finest 
poetry you have ever written. I am particularly taken with "Sub- 
marine Mountains" and with the quiet beauty, perfect in every way, 
of your sea pieces, especially "Sighting Arabia," and also the more 
thoughtful and reminiscent poem, "Pageants of the Sea," that holds 
me like the sound of ocean itself. 

Your little dramatic lyric of India and Japan, put into such 
lines and stanzas as you give us in "The Peasant of Gotemba," 
"The Pilgrim," "The Malay to His Master," etc., are perfect in 
their way. The poems to Alice [Songs to A. H. R. — Mrs. Alice 
Hegan Rice] are lovely lyrics. No question about it! They reveal 
a different side of your genius from that which you portray in your 
dramatic and descriptive poems of far wanderings. The poem, 
"Beauty and Stillness," which I read first in the current number of 
The North American Review, strikes me as being finer than any I 
have read for many a day, either by an English or an American poet. 
It's an immortal work of art. Success and happiness to you. Your 
friend, Madison Cawein. 

323 



Madison C aw e i n 

1914, February 21. 

Eric Pape: * * * We have moved from our house. We 
are living in a flat [The St. James Apartment House, St. James Court], 
across the Court from it. [They rented out their home and moved 
into smaller and less expensive quarters.] Adversity has smitten us 
hip and thigh. I have lost every thing I ever had. Gone to the 
winds. Not exactly lost, you understand, but just lived away. 
The years have consumed it. * * * 



1914, April 20. 

_ Miss Jessie B. Rittenhouse: You heard correctly. At the 
invitation of Clinton Scollard I am coming to New York the end of 
this month, April, for a brief stay. I am trying to find something 
to do, and Scollard suggests that I come on to New York for a week 
or two and share his room with him at The Century Club. Mrs. 
Clarence de Vaux Royer wants me to come also, and is arranging for 
me to give a reading in the fall from my poems before the Cameo 
Club. I asked $250.00 for the same and tickets are selling very 
well, she tells me. They paid Alfred Noyes $1,000, she tells me, for 
an hour's reading a year or so ago, and although I am an American I 
think I am worth $250.00 and won't take a cent less. [This reading 
was indefinitely postponed on account of the war]. 

I go to Purdue University to read, an evening and a morning, 
on the twenty-second and twenty-third of April, this week, and 
after my return I shall start for New York. * * * 



1914, June 17. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j j^ope you will have the operation 
performed on your eye and that you will have your eyesight restored 
again as good as ever. * * * Your condition, with the death of 
my life-long Louisville friend, Marvin Eddy, has depressed me. * * * 

1914, July 23. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Preston is getting along nicely 
again in the Boys' Club at Chautauqua [New York] and Gertrude is 
enjoying the lectures. She reads from my poems in the Hall of Phil- 
osophy tomorrow. She is taking a course in reading up there, with 
a view of doing something as a maker of money. She is a singer and 
has a fine stage presence, too, and she ought to make something out 
of the readings if she ever gets a chance. * * * 

324 



A Posthumous Autob iogr a phy 

1914, August 13. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * You certainly have your trials 
and tribulations, old man, and how you keep cheerful [being tempor- 
arily, or possibly, permanently blind] under the circumstances 
surprises me. I'd be in the depths of despair. It's good to have 
a disposition like yours. * * * 

1914, August 17. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * The war has put a crimp in everything. 
The magazines want absolutely nothing. It's a bad state of affairs, 
but I suppose it will right itself eventually. Business is dead as a 
door nail here, and I suppose it is the same everywhere. If there is a 
God, which I am beginning to doubt, he should take cognizance of 
humanity. The destruction of so many lives in Europe should 
make him wake up to the fact that his children are suffering. For 
my part I would be just as well off dead as living. It is terrible and 
there seems little hope of its ever being better. What I want, as 
you, too, want, is peace, unbroken and unending. * * * 

1914, August 24. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: Gertrude and Preston returned home from 
Chautauqua last Wednesday, and both look fine. Gertrude is in 
high spirits over her art — that is reading from plays and poems. 
She is going into it as a profession and hopes to make money at it. 
I hope so, too, as there is nothing in the world we need more at the 
present time than money. 

I have just turned over my manuscript of The Poet and Nature to 
John P. Morton & Company for publication. I have written this 
book, some 250 pages, for use in the schools. * * * its intention 
is to stimulate interest in poetry, poetry and nature, our poetry and 
our nature here in the Middle West. This is the best book I have 
ever written in a way, and I expect big things from it. * * * 

1914, September 8. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: We are all well and healthy, and if it were 
not for this miserable war in Europe, and finances, we would be as happy 
as sunflowers. I have a poem on the editorial page of the Sunday 
New York Times. It is about this unholy war, and I call it "The 
End of Summer." * * * 

325 



Madison C a w e i n 

1914, September 18. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * It is almost impossible to collect 
money or to borrow it. Several periodicals owe me money but they 
will not send me checks. I may be able to borrow some money on 
my house, but so far the banks are loath to make loans on real estate. 
The war has done it, and I look for worse times this winter. * * * 

1914, September 24. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I am glad that the operation on your eye 
proved successful. I hope that by the time you receive this letter 
you will be able to read again. * * * LJfg h^s heaped burdens 
past endurance upon your head. You have weathered the ordeal. 
Now Miss Fortune will give Good Fortune an opportunity, I hope. 
* * * I am busy with proof of The Poet and Nature; I think the 
book will be a good one. I hope to get it into the schools here. * * * 

1914, September 29, 

Clinton Scollard: I am still busy with proofs [The Poet and 
Nature and The Morning Road] and expect to be for another two 
weeks or so. If I can do so I am coming to New York as soon as 
finances permit. I should like to get there to attend the joint meeting 
of the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters 
in November. I suppose you will attend this year, being right on 
the spot as you are. I hope some day to see you in your flat and sit 
by that window you indicate, and write — not war poems — but nature 
poems again. I clipped your "At Rheims" from the Sun yesterday. 
It is a fine poem. Indeed the only good poetry written about the 
war so far has been by American poets, not English ones, I think. 

I received a check yesterday from Mr. Rossiter Johnson, treasurer 
of the Authors' Club of New York, for $100, which was manna from 
heaven to me. Mr. Hobart C. Chatfield-Taylor and Professor 
Brander Matthews presented my case, and although I am not a 
member of the Authors' Club, I was placed on the relief list at once. 
This is as good as England with her civil list. Thank God for those 
who recognize the poets and think of them occasionally. [This 
monthly allowance was continued until shortly after Mr. Cawein's 
death]. Your friend, Madison Cawein. 

1914, October 3. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * Gertrude keeps pegging away at 
her work, and manages to forge ahead. She is a splendid reader of 
drama, and I think will make a hit if she ever has an opportunity to 

326 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

let herself be heard. She has some great modern plays to read and 
she reads them, I tell you. 

I want to go next week on my long-deferred trip to Muhlenberg 
County, Kentucky, to look the people and the country over. Otto 
A. Rothert has made arrangements for us, Young E. Allison and 
myself, to go with him. I hope we can do it. [We left Louisville 
Octobers.] * * * 

1914, October 16. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I have just returned from Muhlenberg 
County where I had some interesting experiences and met with some 
queer characters. I read at the High School in Greenville, on the 
morning of the ninth, and was breakfasted and dined nobly. Out on 
Rothert's tract of timber land, where we spent most of our time, we 
went on a fox hunt. We visited a number of old Indian mounds, 
old farms and old graveyards. It was a fine trip. 

On my return found things as usual, and Preston up and well 
again; also a letter from Oglethorpe University — from which Woodrow 
Wilson graduated — inviting me as "the most distinguished poet of 
the South" to write and read an Ode at the laying of its corner stone — 
a new one — the middle of January. I accepted, of course, and shall 
as soon as I receive data begin on the work. Sidney Lanier was a 
professor at Oglethorpe, and wrote an Ode for it in 187 1. * * * 

1914, October 16. 

Bert Finck: Your Musings on the Lounge has been read, and 
has afforded me great pleasure. I find in it a more sobering and 
quieting effect than in your Pebbles and your Plays. There is an 
advance also in a terse command of English — more epigrammatic than 
in the predecessors. Good luck to you, as ever. I hope you will 
realize something from this little book. May your shadow never 
grow less, and may the little book dispel, obliterate all other shadows 
from your life and the troubled lives of many others. * * * 

1914, November id. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * j ^^i having an interesting time 
sitting for an oil painting. I spent nearly every afternoon in the 
studio of my friend Alberts, the past week or so, posing. The portrait 
will soon be complete, life size. It shows me at a table with a manu- 
script in my hand. While he paints I sit in a chair and he, Rothert 
and I talk. I'm enjoying it and will be sorry when it's over. I like 
the picture and so does Gertrude, and I am sure you will, too, and I 
hope that will be soon. * * * 

327 



Madison C aw e i n 

1914, November 13. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: * * * i am leaving Louisville for New- 
York City, again to be the guest of Clinton ScoUard for a week or 
two. I go on Monday to look around there for something to do. 
I don't know what, but I must get something to do. * * * We 
all keep in good health and try to keep up our spirits. It's a bad lot, 
this trying to live in this age of wars and commercialism. * * * 

1914, November 22, New York. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: I find a depression here that equals ours in 
the Middle West. No one has anything to offer. AH you hear 
is the Great War. The meeting of the Institute and the Academy is 
over. I am with Clinton Scollard. I saw Mr. Howells the other 
morning and he looks fine. Frank Dempster Sherman comes over 
to join Scollard and me often, and we smoke and talk. * * * 

I went with Timothy Cole, the engraver, Robert Underwood 
Johnson and Edwdn Markham to visit J. Pierpont Morgan's won- 
derful library yesterday. I saw a number of original manuscripts 
there: Keats', Shelley's, Poe's, Byron's, etc; Keats' lock of hair, 
and the manuscript of Shelley's "Indian Serenade" taken from his 
pocket after drowning, in a deplorable state, but still decipherable; 
Poe's "Annabel Lee" and "The Bells;" "Endymion" complete, even 
the introduction; Byron's "Don Juan" in entirety; Thackeray's 
"Vanity Fair" and Scott's "Lady of the Lake," complete, and more 
other manuscripts of various authors, poets and novelists than I 
can remember — Hawthorne's and Longfellow's, etc., all were 
handsomely bound. * * * 

1914, November 28. 

R. E. Lee Gibson: [This letter is marked in Gibson's hand- 
writing: "The last letter from my dear friend Madison Cawein, the 
poet. He died December 8, 1914. R. E. L. G." It is here quoted 
in full.] My dear Lee: Your letter came on the date of my arrival 
home from New York. Before I left New York I met, in the Century 
Club, my good friend Dr. Henry Van Dyke, just returned from 
Holland for a short trip home. He was as gay as a lark and looked as 
well, if not better than ever. I think he is on a peace mission from 
The Hague, where, you know, he is minister. 

Clinton Scollard left last Wednesday for Washington to visit 
his mother, for several weeks, who resides there. I found it too 
lonesome by myself in his apartment and left the following day, 
Thanksgiving, for home. I found Gertrude and Preston well as 
usual, and everything moving along as usual. 

328 



A Posthumous Autobiography 

In New York there was a lot of depression, but some optimism 
nevertheless. I attended the Poetry Society meeting where one of 
my poems, "The Old Dreamer," was read. Met there all the poets 
of the younger set who are doing good work. 

My new book. The Poet and Nature and the Morning Road, will 
be out the last day of next week, and I shall take great pleasure in 
sending you a copy; also one to De Menil whose good wishes I count 
upon to get the book taken in the schools of St. Louis. 

I hope you will get something to do soon. I'm in the same box 
myself. The outlook is somewhat dark for me, but I keep pegging 
on. Love from all to you and Elaine. Your friend, Madison. 

[As far as known, this letter, Cawein's last one to Gibson, is the 
last letter he wrote.] 



329 



IX 
LETTERS RECEIVED BY CAWEIN 

Madison Cawein received many letters, but saved comparatively 
few. Some were thrown into the waste basket after they had been 
answered, others were saved; many of those he gave away are now 
scattered, others destroyed; and some were sold. Any of his friends 
and acquaintances who asked for an autograph letter that had been 
written to him by this or that distinguished author was likely to get 
the original if Cawein felt that by presenting it he was encouraging 
an interest in literature. 

In the spring of 191 3 — about two years before his death — 
while making preliminary preparations to rent out his large residence 
and move into smaller and less expensive quarters, he sold many of 
his books because he had no place to store them, and, furthermore, as 
he saw the state of his finances, he thought he needed the money. 
For the same reasons he sold some of his letters. The fact that he had 
sold many of his books and letters was not known, as far as I am aware, 
to any of his friends. Pride predominated; had he divulged the exact 
state of his monetary affairs to any of his intimate friends, in or out of 
Louisville, who were practical business men, they not only could 
have shown him that he was not as near to bankruptcy as he supposed, 
but many would have given him financial aid. The officials of the 
Authors' Club of New York and the board of trustees of the University 
of Louisville deserve great credit for the action they took in their 
efforts to relieve Cawein after they learned that he had met with 
financial reverses. 

At any rate, on one of his last trips East he took a bundle of 
letters with him and sold the lot — probably about 150 letters — to a 
dealer in rare books and documents. The dealer could not recall to 
whom he had sold them when I made inquiry, six years later — except 
in one instance — for there were almost as many individual sales as 
letters. The only purchaser he recalled was the one who bought a 
number of the letters: William F. Gable, of Altoona, Pennsylvania. 
Mr. Gable not only submitted to me for inspection and use his col- 

330 



Letters Received 

lection of about twenty letters that were received by or written by 
Cawein, but also furnished me with copies. He also permitted me 
to browse through his great collection of autographed books and 
thousands of letters written by literary and other celebrities of 
America and Europe of this century and of preceding times; but in 
none of the documents did I chance upon any reference to Cawein. 

The only letters received by Cawein which I have read are the ones 
he retained, the few bought by Mr. Gable, those presented to Eric Pape, 
and the few I found in published form. All of them are more or less 
interesting, but bear only in an indirect way on the life and works of 
the poet. If these were printed in full, they alone would fill a book. 
The originals of the thirteen here published are in the Cawein Collec- 
tion, except the two by Riley which are in the collection of William 
F. Gable, the one by Stedman, taken from a copy in the collection of 
Mrs. Laura Stedman Gould, and the one by Aldrich copied from 
The New York Times. If Cawein had saved all his letters and if 
from among them about a dozen of the best had been selected for 
publication here, it is probable that only a few of the following would 
have been chosen : 

Louisville, Kentucky. 
September 26, 1886. 

Mr. Madison J. Cawein, Dear Sir: Your two latest poems have 
pleased me so much that I cannot refrain from expressing my admira- 
tion of them in a letter. 

Your choice of subjects was a most felicitous one; far more in- 
teresting than verses on the "dead gods and goddesses" of old. He 
who sings for them now, is as one who serenades an empty house. 
They have flown, but the men and women, and the beautiful and 
inspiring scenes of our own country and its history still remain to be 
set to song. 

With my best wishes for your future success as a writer, I am, 
yours most truly, Elvira Sydnor Miller. 

[See letter Cawein to Miller, 1886, September 28, Page 175.] 



Revere House, Boston. 
May 27, i! 



My dear Mr. Cawein: Your lovely little book [The Triumph of 
Music] has followed me here from New York with your letter, and I 
hardly know how to thank you for the gratifying inscription of the 
volume. 

My family have been reading it with the delight that your other 
poems gave and I expect soon to share their pleasure. 

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Madison C aw e i n 

I was greatly touched and interested by what you told me of 
yourself. Of course I understand your uneasiness in your present 
situation, and I can't think any relation to a "betting house" fortunate. 
But your conscience is in your own keeping, and so long as that is un- 
spotted, you have nothing that ought really to make you unhappy. 
You have youth, and you have already shown mastery in verse. A 
life of success is before you, and it is for you to make it beautiful and 
beneficent or not. 

I expect to be near Boston all summer, and I shall always be glad 
to see you. My address is in care of Harper and Brothers, New York. 

With cordial regards, yours sincerely, W. D. Howells. 
[See letter Cawein to Howells, 1888, May 19, Page 179.] 



44 East 26th Street, New York. 
May 12, 1889. 

Dear Mr. Cawein: For the second time you have made me your 
debtor, with the delivery of a book of your poetry, and ere this you 
must suspect that I have gone into insolvency so far as such payment 
as thanks may make it concerned. I am a hard-pressed man just now, 
and none too vigorous withal. None the less, however, I did wish to 
read your second volume before acknowledging it — and that, methinks, 
has been the basic reason of this churlish delay. 

One is a little ashamed, moreover, to accept repeated gages from 
a younger comrade, while out of the lists himself for the time being — 
and hence having naught to render in return! But my close friend, 
Mr. Howells, is doing Knightly duty in my stead — and I see that the 
honor of my generation is safe in his hands, and have been pleased to 
note you receiving the accolade therefrom, with so much the greater 
honor accruing to you than if it came from the less-renowned Crusader 
who is now writing you. 

At last, then, I am fresh from looking through your pages, and 
have read your Accolon from beginning to end; a strongly sustained 
dramatic-idyl, and the whole worth your composing — since Tennyson 
has given Arthur's mystic sister the go-by, and I don't find echoes of 
his "Idyls" in your verse, but a manner difi"erent and quite your own. 

Your lyrics, so notably rich in diction and color, are all of a sort 
to insure close attention from your brother-poets. That is indubitable. 
But many, while envying you your vocabulary and affluent command 
of rhythm, will feel that these will serve you more effectively when you 
draw on them with a certain eclecticism. A princess must have a 
varied wardrobe, with all rich stuffs from Cathay and Ind, but she 
dallies with her resources — not displaying all in one season, though 
serene with the consciousness of a reserve-equipment for the grandest 
occasion. If I had your equipment, now so thoroughly tested, and your 

332 



Letters Received 

years before me, I would utilize the former in some way specially 
American — however delightful we all find it to roam the fields trodden 
by those old-world minstrels who are nearest to the hearts of all 
English-writing poets. There is a chance, just now, for American 
themes and atmosphere, and for the poet who masters them. Sin- 
cerely yours, Edmund C. Stedman. 

[See letter Cawein to Mr. Stedman, 1889, May 21, Page 185.] 
[See letter Cawein to Miss Stedman, 1909, January 7, Page 279.] 



Indianapolis, Indiana. 
October 23, 1891. 

My dear Cawein: What's come of ye 'at you don't never let a 
fellow hear nothin' of ye anymore? Have waited and waited till I'm 
plum' wore out a-waitin'! Work! Well, my head whirls with it. Got 
some good things, though, and you'd indorse in parts anyway. Is it so, 
you're contemplating going East to work? O, don't do that, I beg. 
You're right in the country you belong in — so, at least, stay loyal 
to it, and let 'em send their work to you. You'll be the better for 
it every way. Then, every-once-in-a-while, we can go East together, 
as we flourish, and they'll only welcome you the heartier and honor 
you the more. Indeed, no money could tempt me ever to quit my home 
and people. I used to think different, but I was wrong, and am sorry 
that ever, even in youthful thought, I was ever disloyal to my own. 
So don't you ever go away. It will, in the end, hurt not help you. 
God bless you and keep you very brave and steadfast. Yours may be 
the first and best fame of any of America's own singers. 

As ever affectionately, Jamesie. [Riley] 



29 Delamare Terrace, London, W. 
October 26, 1896. 

Mr. Madison Cawein: My dear Sir: I have much to thank you 
for, since in sending me The Garden of Dreams you have made me 
acquainted for the first time with a poet of whose genuine mission 
there can be no question. I see that you have published other volumes: 
I am sorry that they have never fallen in my way. I find in your 
best pieces an intoxicating sense of beauty, a richness, that is rarely 
achieved, although every young poet nowadays strives after it. I 
find, too, a daring use of language which sometimes, nay often, con- 
ducts you to genuine and startling felicities. I am sorry that, with 
all your talent, you have not a greater respect for the English tongue, 
which you sometimes treat with unpardonable levity. What Edmund 
Spenser might do, when the language was still liquid, it is not allowed 

333 



Madison Cawein 

to us to attempt when it is almost solid, and you spoil a beautiful 
lyric with the expression "pave" as a noun; there is no such English 
word. 

I venture to write thus frankly to you because of my confidence 
in your talent. I get dozens of books of verse sent me from English 
and American writers, but it is rarely indeed that I am tempted to 
upbraid them. For you, I desire the most ardent and severe self- 
criticism since your work is worthy of it. 

Yours faithfully, Edmund Gosse. 

17 Hanover Terrace, Regent's Park, N. W. 

August 14, 1901. 

My dear Mr. Cawein: Once more I have to thank you for the 
very kind gift of a volume of your poems. I often wish that your work 
was better known over here. Have you ever thought of making an 
arrangement for a selection from your poems to be published in 
London? I should be very glad if I could help you to carry this out. 

I have often been asked to be sponsor for American poets, and I 
have always refused, for unless one is quite in sympathy with a writer 
such a task is the heaviest of burdens. But to you — who have never 
suggested such a thing — I would say that it would be a great and 
genuine pleasure to me to introduce a selection of your work, if you 
ever thought of such a thing. Possibly that might help the arrange- 
ment. If so, and you care to think of it, consider that you have my 
promise. 

Believe me, my dear Mr. Cawein, very sincerely yours, Edmund 
Gosse. 

From The New York Times, December 5, 1908: 

T. B. Aldrich on Poetry's Decline. Hitherto Unpublished 
Letter to a Poet Gives a Poet's Views on the Case of his Art. 

By the kind permission of Mr. Madison Cawein, the poet, the 
New York Times Saturday Review of Books is able to print a letter^ to 
Mr. Cawein from the late Thomas Bailey Aldrich on a subject which 
lately has been much discussed in the columns of the Review, namely, 
the Decline of Poetry: 

Ponkapog, Massachusetts. 
October 7, 1902. 

My dear Mr. Cawein: As I once said among some notes in The 
Century Magazine: "There is always a heavy demand for fresh 
mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the 
largest appetite." At the present moment dialectic inanities with a 

334 



Letters Received 

pleasant jingle to them find a ready market. Purely meditative 
poetry, poems of landscape without figures of human action, never 
had a large sale in this country or any other country. 

But if any one of our poets of to-day were to produce a poem like 
"Evangeline" or "Snow-Bound," he would lack neither publisher nor 
readers. The stagnation of the poetry market is not the fault of the 
lovers of poetry, but of the makers of it. The kind that is wanted is 
not forthcoming. When the right note is struck, there will be a loud 
response. Kipling's "Recessional" found as many listeners as any poet 
could desire. Longfellow is the only American poet that ever made an 
ample yearly income (say ten or fifteen thousand dollars) by his verse. 
The poetical works of Lowell, Whittier, Bryant, and Emerson have 
met with only a moderate sale. Whittier's one notable success (finan- 
cially) was "Snow-Bound," of which 20,000 copies were sold in the 
year of publication. I am told by Messrs. Houghton, Mififlin & Com- 
pany that the demand for Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, &c., has not 
fallen off. Small volumes of verse by men less famous are as remunera- 
tive as ever they were. During the last five years H. M. & Co. have 
published (at their own expense) a score of such volumes. Several of 
them did not pay for the binding, several have been reprinted (in 
editions of 700 copies) two or three times. This is just the same 
fortune that would have attended these books had they been published 
twenty-five or thirty years ago. 

The situation in England is similar to that in the United States. 
In each case the one poet who had a great following is dead, and no one 
has come to take his place. Is it the fault of the public, or the poet who 
doesn't come? Perhaps he is with us incognito. When Keats was laid 
in his grave at Rome, there were not twelve — no; there were not two — 
men in England who suspected that a great poet had been laid at rest. 
Leigh Hunt had a strong idea that Keats was a fine poet, but not as 
fine a poet as Leigh Hunt. Byron, Moore, Rogers, and Southey could 
not read "The Eve of St. Agnes" and "Hyperion." No great poet 
(except, possibly, in the case of Tennyson) was ever immediately 
popular; by immediately I mean in the poet's lifetime. Tennyson was 
neglected for years. 

I believe in a splendid literary future for this country. After 
the all-absorbing novelists have run their course, we shall have a 
generation, not of poets, perhaps, but of dramatists — blank verse 
fellows. Imagination is not going to come to nothing in a vast nation 
like ours. I would like to look in on the United States a hundred and 
fifty years from now! Maybe I should come across volume upon 
volume of annotations on "Cawein's Poems," wrongly attributed to 
J. Whitcomb Riley, or perhaps to Bacon, for there will still be material 
for the foolkiller in 2052 A. D. 

So put all your thought and soul and art into the verses you are 
writing to-day . . . It is enough to be a poet. 

335 



Madison C aw e i n 

His work outlives him — there's his glory! 

Begging your pardon for sending you such a tiresome screed, I am, 
yours sincerely, T. B. Aldrich. 

[See letter Cawein to Aldrich, 1902, October 12, Page 237.] 



48 West 59th Street, New York. 
January 11, 1903. 

My dear Cawein: I have both your books; the English one 
[Kentucky Poems] I have read, and the newer collection [A Voice on 
the Wind] I am expecting to read when I get time. I need not praise 
them to you, for you know what I think of your work, but I thank you 
for them. I did not find Gosse's introduction warm enough, but it is 
much for an Englishman to be even tepid toward a man of another 
nation. 

I wish I could say something to comfort you in your evil days, 
and I do think you are mistaken about the Eastern indifference to 
Western poetry. Is the East indifferent to Riley? Your poetry is too 
fine and good for the popular taste; that is all. It is by far the best we 
are now having; but you have not widened your course, much and 
the successive volumes, while they add to the sum of beauty which 
you have created, do not appeal with novelty to a sign-seeking 
generation. It is cold comfort to remind you that you have your gift, 
a lovely and exquisite gift, and you have the recognition of the best; 
but you must try to make the most of that, since you have the means 
of living along with it. What other American poet has been reprinted 
in London, except Riley? Cheer up! 

Yours ever, W. D. Howells. 

Indianapolis, Indiana. 
January 11, 1904. 

Dear Cawein: Thank you — thank you! for the patient query 
reminding me of not having sent you a copy of the last book. Now I do 
send it, though I've been waiting all this time for a corrected edition — 
this one (issued while I was on the road) being simply measled with 
typographical errors, and of such monstrosity — some of 'em— I marvel 
even that the hand with which I write is not this instant soppin'-warm- 
and-wet with printer's blood! — as Browning might put it — "Gr-r-r!" 
Nay, then, dear heart, 'tis not with thee I'mst angry, but the damnst 
printer-knave who hath unleashed all hell's perversities of misbegotten 
words and deeds across my lilied lawns of virgin verse ! Soh ! Sainted 
Browning, "G-r-r" at the Kuss, for me forever-more! 

Write me if book safely reaches you. Your always faithful^ 
Jamesy. [Riley] 

Never in better health, body and soul! 

336 



Letters Received 

Oyster Bay, New York. 
August 22, 1907. 

My dear Mr. Cawein: I am deeply touched by your kindness. 
I hope I need not say how I value the books and the special illustra- 
tions, together with the manuscript copy of your "Ode at Gloucester" 
[An Ode in Commemoration of the Founding of Massachusetts Bay 
Colony in the Year 1623]. Will you thank Mr. Pape most cordially 
for me and say how very much I appreciate the gift of the pictures? 
Let me say also that I particularly value the verses you have yourself 
written on the title pages of the books. Did you divine, or did I tell 
you that "Noera" and the four lines you quote from "Indian 
Summer" are among my special favorites? 

Again let me thank you. You are one of the Americans who are 
doing good work for America just when she most needs it, and I 
pri'ze your friendship and wish you all good luck. 

By the way, I was rather interested to think that I of Dutch 
blood should be making a speech, and you of German should be 
reading a poem, at the Pilgrim celebration. When did your ancestors 
come here? 

With warm regards to Mrs. Cawein, believe me, faithfully yours, 
Theodore Roosevelt. 

[See Letter Cawein to Roosevelt, 1907, August 25, Page 267.] 



Avalon, Princeton, New Jersey. 
October 16, 191 1. 

A letter to the Book of Chosen Poems of my friend Madison 
Cawein — [Poems, published 191 1]. 

Dear Book: 

You have been my companion now for nearly a month; resting 
quietly at my elbow while I was working; and in the moments of 
leisure, at the sunset hour, or in the midnight, ever ready to give me 
a song, or a dream, or a word of intimate communion. 

Part of you is twilight — glad dawn or tender eve; and part of 
you is midnight — dark and potent. I like the first part of you most, 
though I feel the force of the other part. 

Of all that you have brought to me, perhaps the purest pleasure 
came with my already beloved "Noera" and "Fern-Seed." They 
are lovely things. But haven't you changed the name of the latter 
[to "The Spell"]? Why? But I forgive you. 

"One Who Loved Nature," "Revealment," "Preludes," and all 
your inward poems in this vein, touching the unseen landscapes and 
the songs unsung, are delightful to me. 

337 



Madison C a w e i n 

But the great thing is your magic of description — sometimes 
almost bewildering. What fairy gardens, haunted woods, and living 
waters you have! What great months run and march through your 
years! "March," "October," "May," "November" — you make me 
wonder at them all, and almost forget that I am the sworn lover of 
June and April. 

And then you take a double-handful of wonderful things, jewels 
of vision, and string them on a single thread — a long, lucid, priceless 
necklace of "Intimations of the Beautiful." 

And then you drop them and wander into mystic deeps of sorrow 
with "Poppy and Mandragora." 

Or you strike out for the hills with "A Road Song." 

Or you bid me follow the garden ways of other days, believing 
that there is some one there who dreams "Sunset Dreams." 

Yes, "There are Fairies," and they have entered into you, dear 
Book, and I thank you for letting me see some of them. 

Go back to your Master, little Book, and tell him what you have 
done for his friend. Tell him that with a single phrase you have often 
revealed a hidden thing; and with a single touch you have set a full 
chant singing, overtones and undertones; and with a linked song you 
have made the whole day musical. Tell him this, and bear my greeting 
to the Poet, and bid him be glad of his Art. And then come back to me, 
for I want you and must keep you. 

Your grateful reader, Henry Van Dyke. 

[See letter Cawein to Van Dyke, 191 1, October 21, Page 302.] 

Authors' Club, 2 Whitehall Court, London, S. W. 

4th December, 1913. 

Madison Cawein, Esq., Dear Sir: It is with great regret that I 
receive your letter of the 21st ultimo. You seem to have been un- 
fortunate in the English papers and reviews you have read, because 
I can assure you that there is every admiration in this country for good 
American poetry, and it is lamentable, because of an imaginary un- 
friendly feeling or lack of appreciation in this country towards the 
lyrical works of our trans-Atlantic cousins, that you should, on that 
account, desire to withdraw from membership of the Authors' Club. 

We have welcomed on very many occasions poets from your side 
of the water and they have, I think, found themselves in very happy 
surroundings here. My Committee hope that on reconsideration you 
will decide to continue your membership of the Authors' Club, at 
least for another year. We are shortly issuing a revised List of Mem- 
bers and I hope that your name will be included in it. Please send me 
a further letter on receipt of this note. Yours faithfully, Algernon 
Rose, Hon. Sec. 
[See letter Cawein to Authors' Club, 191 3, November 21, Page 321.] 

338 



Letters Received 

Authors' Club, 2 Whitehall Court, London, S. W. 

23rd December, 1913. 

Madison Cawein, Esq., Dear Sir: I beg to acknowledge the 
receipt of your letter of the 15th inst. and am very glad to know that 
you recall your resignation from the Authors' Club. In this country, 
where newspapers publish extraordinary statements, we are ac- 
customed to having our most cherished poets vilified. Only recently 
there were some very disgraceful articles appeared belittling Chaucer 
and, of course, we are tired to death of the way in which Shakespeare 
has been traduced. I can assure you that Russell Lowell holds a very 
high place in the estimation of lovers of poetry in this country. 

The recent dinner of the Authors' Club, which was given to the 
American Ambassador and Mrs. Page, which was attended by 520 
members and guests, should show you that there is a very friendly 
feeling amongst the members towards writers in America. 

With best wishes for the New Year, believe me, yours sincerely, 
Algernon Rose, Hon. Sec. 
[See letter Cawein to Authors' Club, 1913, December 15, Page 322.] 



339 



X 

PUBLISHED COMMENTS AND REVIEWS BY CAWEIN 

Seven Articles Written by Cawein 

Poetry and the Public, The Courier- Journal, 1902 

"The Far Horizon," The New York Times, 1907 

Our American Poets, The Louisville Evening Times, 1907 

"The Dragnet," The Louisville Evening Times, 1909 

The Best Poem, The New York Times, 1914 

The Future of Poetry, The Writer s Bulletin, 19 14 

The World's Real Wealth, The Writer's Bulletin, 1914 



Courier- Journal, Louisville, December 14, 1902: Poetry and 
the Public. Written for The Courier -Journal by Madison 
J. Cawein. 

Editor's Note: Madison J. Cawein, one of the really successful 
poets of the day, discusses in The Courier- Journal the attitude of the 
public and critics to poets. He deplores the lack of interest taken by 
modern generations and smites some hypercritical critics: 

There are some things that no writer should undertake, unless he 
is willing to place himself in an unenviable position with regard to the 
public, that is often even more sensitive than a poet when it comes 
to being criticised. The world is always so very prone to innuendo 
that a writer of verse has individually expected more consideration 
from it than is certainly due to him, when he comes forward with his 
grievances. However that may be, I have undertaken to say a few 
things in this article that I have long desired to say, and shall begin it 
with the statement that never in the whole history of English litera- 
ture was there ever less encouragement for the writing of serious 
poetry than there is at the present time. 

Mr. Howells, in a recent number of Harper's Magazine, after con- 
sidering at some length the general public's lack of interest both in 
the reading and writing of poetry, wound up his article by stating that 

340 



Published Comments by C aw e in 

he did not believe that there ever was a better time than the present 
for the haters of poetry to come forward and proclaim it. Of course, 
his reference was to serious verse; verse that requires a certain amount 
of aesthetic acumen, or intellectual training, to appreciate or under- 
stand. The trouble about most people at the present day is that 
they do not want to be made to think, or that they are mentally 
lazy, and do not care to exert themselves intellectually when it comes 
to the reading of either prose or poetry, no matter what esoteric 
beauties they may contain or be suggestive of. The reading of much 
poor fiction is probably unfitting us for all other serious reading. 

Possibly, though, it is a matter of temperament and inclination 
only. I was about to write education — but no one could accuse the 
present generation of being uneducated. Indeed, I do not think that 
there was ever a time in which knowledge was so generally diffused. 
Perhaps it is in this very fact — overeducation — that the germ of the 
present condition lies. Fifty years ago, when we did not have the 
schools that we now have, poetry was more widely read and appre- 
ciated than it is now. And at the close of the eighteenth and the 
beginning of the nineteenth centuries it was poetry that occupied 
the chief place in the world of letters. Reputations were much more 
easily made in the writing of poetry then than they are now. Single 
poems and single volumes of poems, that would not create even a ripple 
in the great sea of literature at the present day, were published, 
bought and discussed by a class of people who at the present time 
absolutely ignore all poetry. The writers of those generations never 
dreamed that prose would eventually usurp the high place occupied 
by poetry; and that the modern novel, with its phenomenal sales, 
would finally overshadow and probably destroy the most refined of 
all arts, as some huge and baleful fungus of the forest poisons a beauti- 
ful wild fiower growing near it. 

But it is not my intention to attempt to probe to its source the 
reason for this present indifference to, and neglect of, the essentials of 
poetry on the part of the general reading public. Probably it is the 
active, the strenuous life most Americans are living that unfits them 
for the enjoyment of this "most meditative of all arts." Then again 
our system of education may be at fault; too much stress may be laid 
upon scientific fact and not sufficient upon aesthetic fancy; too much 
time bestowed upon philosophy and mental science, and too little 
upon the myth and romance of nature. Whatever the reason may 
be, the fact obtains, nevertheless, that there never was a time in 
which, generally considered, more good poetry was being written and 
less read. Hardly ever does the sale of a volume of serious verse now 
justify its publication. The result is that at the present day there is 
scarcely a publishing house in this country that is willing to under- 
take at its own expense the publication of a volume of serious verse by 
a poet of even considerable reputation. Publishers as well as book- 

341 



Madison C aw e i n 

sellers will tell you that serious poetry does not sell. Consequently 
very few volumes are brought out at the expense of the publisher. 

Mr. Edgar Fawcett, the American novelist and poet, recently 
wrote me from England that a similar condition of affairs exists in 
London. He says that London is full of poets, excellent ones, too — 
though minor, of course, as all our poets are nowadays, according to 
the perspicacious critics — who are unable to find publishers for their 
poems and are compelled to publish at their own expense, if they wish 
to appear before the public at all. 

The magazines and the newspapers then are their last resources; 
but very little satisfaction is to be obtained by contributing to these. 
In the case of the magazines, a poet is fortunate who is able to get, 
say, some dozen poems accepted and published in the course of a 
year. In the case of the newspapers, it is different, of course, but he 
can expect little or no remuneration for his contributions from them; 
and his friends as well as his enemies are liable to remark: "Oh, well, 
he can't get his stuff taken by the magazines, and so he gives it to the 
papers. It can't be much after all." 

When, at last, all obstacles being overcome, the little volume is 
finally published at the poet's own expense, or through the aid of his 
friends and admirers, there is a greater trouble for him to overcome 
even than the finding of a publisher. A first volume by any poet has 
always been considered by the critics as peculiarly their legitimate 
prey, and it usually gets small justice, if any, at their hands. More- 
over, the modern school of American magazine and newspaper criti- 
cism seems to have fallen into the hands of a lot of incapables; men 
who for the greater part are totally incompetent of judging a really 
serious book of verse. Lacking in acquaintanceship with the old 
classics, as well as with the best in modern poetry, one could hardly 
expect anything but injustice, abuse and ridicule from these self- 
important little Christopher Norths. This is truer of the critics of the 
East and North than it is of those of the South and West. And they 
of the East are usually more evidently violent when it comes to the 
criticism of a volume of poetry from the South than they are when the 
volume is from their own locality. The fact that a great number of 
the Eastern poets, male and female, write criticisms of poetry for the 
Eastern periodicals, may account for this. 

No one would have any fault to find with true criticism, no 
matter how severe it might be. Many of the greatest of our poets 
have profited through criticism. But if a book is worthy of being 
criticised at all, let the criticism be true if it must be severe. But 
most of the big reviews in this country deem it beneath their dignity 
to pay any attention to poetry at all, good, bad or indifferent. The 
home-production is almost completely ignored. It is seldom that a 
volume of verse by an American is reviewed at any length in any of 
the big book reviews of the East. However, it is quite different when 

342 



Published Comments by C awe in 

a volume by an English or Canadian poet is in question. Occasionally 
a worthy poet possesses a friend, who is a critic on one of these self- 
constituted criterions of literary taste, and justice is done to him and 
his verses so long as his friend holds his position. 

And ever the cry goes up, voiced most vehemently by these 
great organs of literary culture, that all the poets are dead! that no 
poetry worthy of serious consideration is being produced in this 
country! The question arises in my mind at once: Have they or 
the public ever done anything, or are they doing anything, toward the 
encouragement of the production of great or even true poetry? The 
kind of verse that is fair to find favor with both critic and public now 
is the sort that makes its appearance in the columns of such publica- 
tions as Life, Puck and Judge. Dialect, nonsense and humorous 
rhymes are what the American public buys and reads. Only the 
writers of such verse can hope for appreciation from it and justice 
from the critics. Their volumes will sell in the thousands, where the 
books of the writers of real poetry will sell in the first of the numerals 
or not at all. This is not only true of the poets of the present day who 
are still writing, but also of the works of the poets who are gone. 
Outside of a little reading done in the colleges and High Schools, the 
masters of English verse are neglected. The poems of Milton, of 
Byron, Bryant, Poe and Emerson gather dust on the shelves of the 
booksellers. Eventually they are relegated to the bargain counter, 
where they are picked up by some old-fashioned lover of poetry, for 
a song. 

In the end, with all this staring him in the face — neglect, abuse 
and unremuneration for all his heart-burnings, strivings and pains- 
takings — is it a wonder that, in the sickened soul of the poet who has 
published one or two volumes of high-class verse, the question as to 
whether he shall continue to write or not resolves itself into the four 
simple words — What is the use? 



New York Times, April 6, 1907: Lucas Malet's book for the 
FUTURE. An American poet tells why he esteems The Far 
Horizon above other recent works of fiction. Written 
FOR The New York Times Saturday Review of Books by Madison 
Cawein. 

To the prolific reader of the modern novel, The Far Horizon 
must mark an epoch, both in point of distinction and of style. It is 
a rather curious and altogether agreeable pastime to compare the 
points of merit with the latest books of Mrs. Wharton and Fogazzaro, 
although Mrs. Wharton's slender little sheaf of a story, Madame de 
Treymes, hardly ranks as anything more than a delightfully subtle 
character sketch. But in Fogazzaro's Saint, we come somewhat 

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Madison C aw e i n 

nearer to the abiding bulk of the conventional novel, even to the 
lengthy religious controversy which seems to subordinate the love 
theme almost to the finest point of perspective. Both these books are 
significant without doubt, and are among the few good novels of the 
present day. But one puts down a story like The Far Horizon with a 
rather different feeling. It is a book for the future, and will grow in 
appreciation and popularity. A certain subjectiveness of style dis- 
tinguishes it, a sort of reminiscent touch, which by some conjurer's 
trick becomes the most objective thing in the world, and as a result 
the characters actually live and move and have a very real existence. 

The Lady of the Windswept Dust is all the more real for her 
allegorical name, and her comings and goings outside the conventional 
law. Our hero is described as a middle-aged gentleman of moderate 
fortune, who happens through force of circumstances to be a "paying 
guest" at an eminently respectable lodging house in one of the un- 
fashionable parts of London. Not alluring, surely; nothing brilliant 
to enhance the picture; only one of those remarkable things which, 
in this instance, done in gray, in almost neutral tints, yet has the 
effect of strong opalescent color. A story subdued almost to the 
point of sombreness, but with a certain Oriental richness of effect. 
For out of this oppresive background grow gradually upon the con- 
sciousness a being altogether lovely and noble, a person of grandly 
simple soul, committed to greatness, who moves among his fellow 
beings with a pathetic dignity and loftiness of outline. Always perfectly 
in their midst; one of them and yet not one of them. Surely Mrs. 
Harrison's [Mrs. Mary St. Leger Harrison] art can go no further in 
subtle character painting. While the book as a whole impresses one 
as sad, Dominic Iglesias himself is not sad at all, but moves in his 
daily life with a fine serenity, which somehow heightens the general 
effect of pathos without spoiling the splendid sanity and poise of his 
character. He suffers terribly, it is true, having periods of agony and 
self-abasement, which are inevitable where one either thinks or feels. 
Freedom, loneliness, and old age are his burdensome guests. But it 
is noticeable and significant that he advances out of these periods 
always a step further on his way, healing himself of his hurts, as all 
great natures do, and adjusting himself to the conditions of his life 
with a very spiritual fineness. 

One of the most beautiful and convincing chapters in the book 
is the one where Dominic, sad and wasting away with illness, comes, 
by a natural and reasonable process of thought, to give himself back 
to the Mother Church. This part of the story has nothing of the 
character of a religious controversy, such as we feel in Fogazzaro's 
Saint, but is subordinated as a real and abiding part of a lonely 
man's life whose predilection for the Catholic Church was his, first 
of all, through the instinct of race, as he was by birth a Spaniard; 
and, secondly, by a very logical process of reasoning. Mrs. Harrison 

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Published Comments by C awe in 

has here as elsewhere shown herself a master of technique. Where 
she has used a religious or philosophical idea, and the book is full of 
them, she has been careful to put them into the story and not to 
build her story around an abstract idea. 

First of all she is telling a story, and everything is fuel which is 
rightfully used to keep the story going. Such little passages as the 
following, "The pathos of life as the multitude lives it, stupidly, 
without ideas, without any conscious nobility of purpose, yet with a 
certain blundering and clumsy heroism," she puts into the thoughts 
of very real people, and it seems natural for them to be said. One 
likes the portrait of Sir Abel Barking, which is well drawn, as is the 
little group of people who live just within sight of Dominic's lonely 
window, and who play such an important little part in his life. George 
Lovegrove is wholesome and lovable. His humility and his thrusting 
himself aside, so that he might not be in his friend's way, have a rare 
pathos. In point of faithfulness he was undoubtedly first, and it seems 
but fitting in the final chapter that he and the nun and the Lady of 
the Windswept Dust should share in some wise the last vigil. 

The story, although it never abandons the loud environments of 
London, repeatedly impresses you as being vividly and unquestionably 
idyllic. There is the idyllic scene — a twentieth century Watteau, as 
it were — of the meeting of Dominic Iglesais and Poppy St. John, 
the Lady of the Windswept Dust. And again that impressive picture 
of the lone cedar in Trimmer's Green, "with its leafless trees and 
iron railings, livid, a grayness upon them as of fear." A cedar, 
symbolic, in a melancholy way, of this sad and solitary soul, this 
isolated man, outside whose windows it stretched its gaunt and sombre 
branches, tortured and weeping with the winds and rains of Autumn. 
And, then, again, we have those happier touches, full of poetry, those 
harkings back to the little house in Holland Street, with its "bravely 
blossoming garden," a veritable oasis in the gray dust of Dominic's 
days, the one flowery spot in the desert of his years, fragrant, and 
hushed and holy, holding the imagination, as it held the memory, 
with an appealing, an irresistible insistence as a little child holds 
one's heart, with the gentle innocence of its eyes. 

Not since I read the forty-first chapter of The Ordeal of Richard 
Feverel has any chapter in a modern novel impressed me as did 
the closing one of The Far Horizon. Here, as does in his best work 
the great novelist, Meredith, Mrs. Harrison has achieved greatness. 
Fine and beautiful, it is also dramatic, in a quiet, unobtrusive way, 
and a fitting close, worthy of the notable whole. Leaving us, as it 
does, with an overwhelming sense of regret, we still feel that it has 
its raison d'etre, that thus it would have actually happened in real 
life; so in the ice in the smile of undeviating fate are we brought 
face to face with the irony of the actual. Our regret, however, is 
tempered with satisfaction at the close that the end was such — 

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Madison C aw e i n 

fittingly such — that the Hfe of this man, blameless and beautiful, and 
the life of this woman, weak and unfortunate, had been permitted at 
least to touch, though it was too late, to touch spiritually and no more, 
and through the purifying fire of that contact to rise above the body, 
the frailties of the flesh, the grosser physical passions. 



Louisville Times, May 31, 1907: Our American Poets, by Madison 
Cawein. 

That the average American reader is better informed on the 
subject of modern English poetry and poets than is the average 
English reader on the subject of American poets and poetry goes 
without saying. That almost all Englishmen read little or no Ameri- 
can verse, good, bad or indifferent, is emphasized in my conviction by 
the question put by an intellectual British subject, the English Am- 
bassador, James Bryce, at a banquet not so long ago, as to "Who are 
your poets?" 

A number of New York editors, some of them more or less dis- 
tinguished, have undertaken to enlighten the mind of this great public 
man as to who our poets really are, and in their strenuous efforts to 
do so have entirely lost sight of, overlooked, the two foremost poets 
in our country, Joaquin Miller and James Whitcomb Riley. 

Miller, unquestionably, is a poet who has a right to take his place 
by the side of the best poets now writing in England, not excepting 
even Swinburne, and it merely argues their ignorance of literary 
matters for any well-read men or women, English or American, to 
confess to an unacquaintance with Joaquin Miller's works. It has 
not been so many decades ago since England, literary England, 
hailed and honored him as our foremost poet, and that during the 
lives of Lowell, Whittier and Whitman. The East, I am compelled 
to say, is prone to ignore, or putting it more courteously, lose sight of 
poets who do not reside and work within its immediate reach, within 
its own environment, the comfortable circumference of its vision; not 
too far from its great literary centers, Boston and New York. Had 
Miller resided in either of these cities he would have been certain of 
mention by many of, if not all, the enlightened editors there when in- 
terviewed as to "Who are your poets?" 

Not since we had Walt Whitman with us have we produced an 
American poet more absolutely democratic and cosmopolitan than 
is Joaquin Miller, with all his faults and foibles of rhyme, rhythm and 
reason. What an array of entirely American poems, excellent in 
many ways — in spite of his many mannerisms — but frequently rising 
to heights of sublimity, can we point to with pride as his contribution 
to American song. To mention a few, I shall name only "The Arizon- 
ian," "The Ship in the Desert," "With Walker in Nicaragua," "Sappho 

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Published Comments by C awe in 

and Phaon," a thoroughly American poem, in spite of its title; and, 
last, his just published poem on Alaska, entitled, "Light," which an 
Eastern poet has described to me as being one of the most wonderfully 
beautiful poems she had ever read. 

James Whitcomb Riley, also has his credentials from England as 
well as America. He is a poet, though, of the people and for the 
people. Simple, sweet and direct, and true as true gold. We speak of 
him affectionately as "our Burns," our American Burns, and Burns 
never wrote any lovelier songs than some that Riley has written; and 
for originality of phrasing and in versatility of characterization, 
Riley has even surpassed Burns at many times. His work never 
smells of the lamp, as the work of most of our younger poets, English 
and American, does. No academic groves for him to wander in. He 
has relegated the classics to the place they belong, the dry-as-dust back 
shelves of old Dr. Teufelsdreck, where they may lie, for all he cares, 
to gather grime and dust and worms from everlasting unto everlasting. 
To the credit of Riley, also, must go the making of one most imagina- 
tive piece of blank verse, a fantastical play, entitled, "The Flying 
Islands of the Night," which Thomas Bailey Aldrich once mentioned 
to me as being worthy of a place by the side of Shakespeare's "Mid- 
summer Night's Dream." 

These are the poets whom I would point out to Mr. Bryce as 
being most worthy of his consideration and perusal, Joaquin Miller 
and James Whitcomb Riley, whom the people of this country long 
ago laureled as our foremost poets, if not our greatest; and not, as the 
editors of the East did, in answer to the English Ambassador's ques- 
tion, those three or four poets of the younger generation, academic and 
transcendental, whose reputations are just now in the making, and 
not yet made. 

Note by the editor [of The Louisville Times] : Mr. Cawein modestly 
refrains any inclusion of his own name and the title in the foregoing 
article, but here is what The Kentucky Post, printed at Covington, and 
referring to him as "Kentucky's Poet Laureate," discriminately and 
truly says of our distinguished singer: 

"What of the poet who has celebrated in melodious verse her 
hills and dales, her fauna and flora, doing it in such manner as to call 
forth the enthusiastic praise of some of the best living critics? Ken- 
tucky might say to the Ambassador: Please take the trouble to read 
the introduction to an English edition of Cawein's poems, an intro- 
duction and appreciation by Edmund Gosse, one of the first of living 
British critics. In that you will find it set forth that Cawein is a 
solitary hermit thrush of song, with a note, a melody, a beauty all 
his own." 

And, indeed, Gosse's praise is not exaggerated. Cawein has 
written many volumes of poems, varying in degree, kind and excel- 

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Madison C aw e i n 

lence. His most discriminating and truest friends have often told 
him that he has published too much; that he has not weeded out 
enough. And yet, when all is said and done, Cawein has already 
written a body of verse which more than challenges comparison with 
the poems of William Vaughan Moody and G. E. Woodberry, who 
were some time ago declared the greatest living American poets. 

For variety of rhythm and rhyme, for daring of metrical experi- 
ment, for range of theme, neither Woodberry nor Moody can compare 
with Cawein. Sonnets and lyrics, dramatic sketches and blank verse 
have come from his versatile lyre. He has written ballads dealing 
with old legends and poems dealing with Oriental themes. But the 
work by which he will live is that exquisite poesy in which he depicts 
the glamour of the Kentucky forests and streams and preserves for us 
something of that nature beauty which must inevitably vanish when 
Kentucky becomes the hive of industry and commerce for which its 
destiny marks it. 

Louisville Times, November 26, 1909: News about books. 
Madison Cawein on The Dragnet, by Evelyn Snead Barnett. 

In a recent number of a New England periodical that important 
modern creation, the novel, and more especially the novel viewed as 
a best seller, is analysed and defined at length. It is a very just and 
common-sense estimate of the commercial and literary values of the 
novel, by a well-known writer of the Middle West, who himself, as 
he confesses, has been the victim and the writer of several best sellers. 

His article is a very amusing and significant rebuke of the popular, 
exalted, literary notion that a novel is necessarily short-lived and 
trivial, because it happens to have caught the public taste, the latter 
commodity having been from time immemorial the bete noir of the 
academic school. And he points out that some of the best modern 
fiction, notably the books of Mrs. Wharton, Mrs. Humphry Ward, 
Mr. Churchill and Mr. William De Morgan, have been frequently 
seen in the book stalls, conspicuous among the best sellers. 

It is clear, therefore, that the best modern English and American 
fiction has two distinct ideals to follow, and which will be followed 
with more or less faithfulness according to the particular bias of the 
individual writer. One, for the thread of the story, which of necessity 
must have body enough to sustain interest to the end of the chapter; 
and the other, and more important, perhaps, for that mysterious and 
flowing and evanescent quality called style, in which the story is 
clothed, and which is properly the keynote of the whole, and which 
same mysterious and ineffable garment is the last test of art, and its 
finest florescence. So that Mr. Stevenson believes that a writer, 
having caught this important trick, may deal in what subject-matter 
he pleases and have no difficulty in holding his audience. 

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Published Comments by C aw e in 

In Mrs. Evelyn Snead Barnett's new book, just published under 
the title of The Dragnet, and which is her first long novel, the reader 
finds the same delightful charm of simplicity in style that distinguishes 
her earlier work, and added to this a very absorbing story of contem- 
porary American life. 

Mrs. Barnett is a Kentuckian by birth, and has been a well-known 
writer, for several years, of shorter magazine stories and the editor of 
the literary page of The Courier-Journal, the paper which Mr. Watter- 
son's editorials have made so famous and so widely read. 

The Dragnet is a story, not only of the dealings of that octopus 
of America, the Trust, and its gradual crushing out of the lives of the 
smaller manufactories engaged in the same business, but it is also a 
story with a mystery, so enthralling that it makes it almost impossible 
for the reader to lay down the book after he is well into the swing of 
the narrative. When you have declared to yourself, "This is the 
climax; invention can go no further; the mystery must be cleared up 
here," suddenly a new and unexpected vista, in a totally different 
direction, is opened up, and you are borne along on a more intricate 
path toward new discoveries. The Dragnet is typically American in 
its setting and in the virile and sometimes grewsome episodes that go 
to make the story, and which no other civilization but our own could 
furnish with such rich crudeness and reality of detail. The Trust is the 
great American problem. Our greatest men have been absorbed in its 
maelstrom; their energy and genius have gone to its making, and their 
lives have been made inseparable from its history. The masses of 
our poor have fed its insatiable and inexorable demands, so that the 
Trust in a measure is a faithful and short chronicle of the American 
people. And, whether one's larger sympathies are with or against it, 
one must realize the faithfulness with which Mrs. Barnett has de- 
picted some of its gloomier and uglier aspects. She has shown, with 
clear and happy art, how it can affect the home and the individual 
life which it touches. The central theme, however, menacing though 
it be, and gloomy at times, does not exclude a delightful and touching 
picture of character and manners, in some of the best types of Ameri- 
can domestic life. Her feminine characters, Constance and Diana, 
although not essentially Southern, have an atmosphere delicate and 
aromatic, suggestive of the old aristocratic Southern life, with its 
pathetic and noble clinging to traditions and its faithful love of the 
old homesteads of the happy long ago. The writer touches the inner- 
most thoughts and feelings of the feminine heart with fidelity to life. 

But it remains to Mr. Blount and the happy, irrepressible Blinky 
to unravel the mystery which furnishes the absorbing and the vital 
interest of the book. And it is given into capable hands. They are, 
both man and boy, real people, and Mrs. Barnett has never had a 
happier inspiration in character drawing. Blinky does not take to 
education because he was born to be an unraveler of the deeds of men 

349 



Madison Cawein 

and not to unravel the dull threads of musty books. We follow both 
of them, Mr. Blount and Blinky, with sympathetic interest through 
the law courts and the long, tedious routine of justice, and into busi- 
ness offices and out into the green fields and open hedges, where 
nature covers up her wounds and the wounds of her children with the 
gradual and healing art of time, and we always find them good, 
wholesome company. Mrs. Barnett has invested them with the loving 
touches of a common humanity, and when the story closes we part 
company with these two sincere, unselfish-conscious people with genuine 
regret. Indeed, Mrs. Barnett has written a most engaging book, and 
we are glad to welcome her into the ranks of the writers of real fiction, 
wholesome and inspiring. To the student and the lover of the great 
out-of-doors Mrs. Barnett's book cannot fail to make its intimate 
appeal, because of her admirable fidelity to the moods of nature, the 
constant and moving rapture of the woods and fields, the lonely terror 
of the ravine by night and the early ride by morning. All of these 
nature settings charm us by their freshness and spontaneity, and we 
turn to the inscription on the first page of the book with the convic- 
tion that the writer has gotten her information at first hand. 



New York Times, July 5, 1914: Well-known poets select the 

BEST POEM AND TELL WHY. CaWEIN IS PATRIOTIC. MaDISON 

Cawein adds to his other virtues that of patriotism. 
The man who of all American poets is most intimate with 
Nature, writes: 

Pendennis Club, Louisville, Kentucky. 

To the Editor of The Neiv York Times: You put a very difficult 
question to me — to name without any preparation what short poem 
in the English language I consider the best. Into my mind there at 
once flashed, on my reading this opening question of your letter, one 
of Poe's poems — Edgar Allen Poe's "To One in Paradise," whose lyric 
quality has never, in my opinion, been surpassed by any poet in 
England or America. Poe wrote several immortal poems, of which 
this is, for music and thought, the supreme lyric. Madison Cawein. 



The Writer s Bulletin, New York, July-August, 1914: The Future 
OF Poetry, by Madison Cawein. 

The future of poetry, for a time, seemed to be toward the poetic 
drama; and many poets and critics, good, bad and indifferent, both 
in England and America, believed, and still pretend to believe, that 
that will be the poetic expression of the future. I, however, differ 

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Published Comments by C awe in 

with them as to this. They, it is true, have a large array of recent 
creditable poetry, in drama form, on their side of the argument to 
point to as convincing. Yeats in Ireland; Phillips in England; 
Hauptmann in Germany; Rostand in France and D'Annunzio in Italy. 
While in America, from a wilderness of dramatists who have written 
excellent poetic drama, I select the name of Percy Mackaye, who has 
written several successful dramas in poetic form, all vibrant with the 
real gold of poetry, and several of which have been produced upon 
the stage. 

In spite of this formidable array of names on the side of poetic 
drama, it is my opinion that the future of poetry lies not in this mode 
of expression but in an entirely dififerent field; the short idyll, the 
briefer the better; the descriptive and dramatic lyric; and the narra- 
tive poem, so popular the first half of the nineteenth century. 

The output of the press, both in prose and poetry, is so large 
that even a constant and consistent reader is hardly able to skim the 
surface of all the good prose and poetry published, much less plumb 
and explore their ever-increasing depths. What is the outlook for 
the years, the centuries to come? Who then will take the trouble to 
read, except perfunctorily, partly or in their entirety, the innumerable 
good dramas of poetry written and published in the nineteenth 
and twentieth centuries? Who even now reads them? Very few; 
and mainly those who are more or less interested in poetry, but 
never the great outside public that reads its Longfellow and 
James Whitcomb Riley. 

Good poetry will always find readers, however few, I am ready 
to state, be it either in the dramatic or the lyrical form; be it in com- 
plete editions or mere anthologies. The chances for immortality on 
the part of the writers of the lyric and the drama are equally divided, 
and their fame will persist in proportion to the amount of the work 
they leave and its excellence. But the writer of a single poem, one 
little lyric, or ballad, has as great a chance for immortality as the 
author of the greatest poetic drama or the longest narrative poem, 
and his fame will endure, in accordance with the excellence of his 
work, in a proportionate degree, with theirs; but it will endure. 

The world will not easily forget such poems as "The Man With 
a Hoe," or "The Recessional." They have greater chances of sur- 
viving the neglect of the ages to come than has all the poetic drama 
that is now being written. And this from the very fact that they are 
brief, and at the same time vital and excellent poetry, and so qualified 
for selection and inclusion in any and every anthology of the present 
or future time. For it will have to come to that eventually. And 
what are the writers of longer poems and the poetic drama to be 
represented by? Excerpts from their works; passages, or some un- 
pretentious lyric, or lyrical expression, that leaves the reader unsatis- 
fied and unconvinced. 

351 



Madison C aw e i n 

Even Stephen Phillips, whom I place at the head of the writers 
of poetic drama in the English-speaking world, at the present time, I 
venture to predict will be presented to the generations to come, not 
by his exquisite "Paola and Francesca" or "Herod," but by his two 
short blank verse poems, "Marpessa," and "Christ in Hades," which 
he has never surpassed. 

It is only the very great, the supreme genius, who has survived 
in poetic drama. A slight lyric has more chance, in my belief, of being 
remembered and read in the future than has any one long poem or 
play of the present day. Shakespeare and Goethe have made it almost 
impossible for the generations that have succeeded and will succeed 
them to achieve anything approaching their greatness in their par- 
ticular field. They are universal; they have set the standard of the 
poetic play so high, that I fear, no one in the future, as hitherto in 
the past, will ever be able to attain to it, much less to surpass. 

Like Dodsley's Old Plays most of the poetic dramas of the 
present will eventually be relegated to the remotest shelves of the 
library of the future, there to collect dust of neglect and oblivion, 
as so many of their predecessors have; while a lyric, selected here and 
there from the great mass of contemporary verse, and occasionally 
from, perhaps, one of these bulky dramas themselves, and included 
in future anthologies, will be all that will survive to represent the 
present output of poetry to the generations that follow. 



The Writer's Bulletin, New York, February, 1915: The World's 
Real Wealth, By Madison Cawein. 

Editor's Note: The following brief article was contributed to 
The Writer s Bulletin shortly before the death of Madison Cawein, 
whose passing we told of in the last issue of our journal: 

The only real wealth of the world is its dreams. These, and not 
our material possessions, make for the greatness of a nation. We live 
in a commercial age. Ours is a material nation that reckons as achieve- 
ments its wonderful progress in material things, inventions, manu- 
factories, railroads, ocean liners, tunnels, tubes and bridges. These 
are the things on which we base our pre-eminence. The spiritual, the 
intellectual, must accept second place. And yet the latter only are 
the things that endure, that make a nation really great. Through 
them Greece and Rome have survived, are still living. Through them 
shall England and Germany and France live when, like Nineveh and 
Tyre, their material magnificence is swept away, their edifices one 
with the sands of the desert. 

We, in this country, are too hurried to devote much time to the 
dreamer, to encourage him with a word of cheer to go on. It is not 

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as it is in the older countries. Congress and the Senate offer him no 
reward, no recognition. He must go his way alone, patiently, poorly, 
if necessary, starving; but he must go it alone, without any hope of 
National recompense or recognition, keeping his fire alive with the 
praise of the very few who believe in him and his ideals. 

There is no place in the work-a-day world for the dreamer. And 
yet it is the dreams that count in the end, that eventually make one 
nation envied of all other nations, setting her pre-eminently higher 
than the others. These are the things that count for more than gold, 
the things that last, that persist beyond the permanence of the steel 
structure, the railroad, the crop report, the trust and the tariff. Many 
have elected to be of this brotherhood ; many have failed to perpetuate 
their dreams. No matter; if one of many shall at last be chosen, that 
one shall add more to the wealth of his country than can all the gold 
of Alaska and California. 

The dreams which any true poet presents to the world may not 
be of that imperishable stuff that makes for immortality, but they 
help humanity for the time being, and that is sufficient, is all he hoped 
for them; dreams of a beauty that has never died, and that will 
never utterly perish from the earth, as long as the aesthetic sense is 
a part of the spiritual nature of man. 



353 



XI 

ESTIMATES OF CAWEIN'S POETRY 

By Five of His Contemporaries 

Edmund Gosse, Introduction to Kentucky Poems, 1902. 
William Dean Howells, North American Review, 1908. 
H. Houston Peckham, South Atlantic Quarterly, 191 5. 
Anna Blanche McGill, The Sewanee Review, 1915. 
Henry Adams Bellows, The Bellman, August 12, 1916. 



Introduction to Kentucky Poems, 1902. Reprinted as Introduc- 
tion TO The Poems of Madison Cawein, 1907. 

AN INTRODUCTION 

By Edmund Gosse 

[English Literary Critic and Poet] 

Since the disappearance of the latest survivors of that graceful 
and somewhat academic school of poets who ruled American litera- 
ture so long from the shores of Massachusetts, serious poetry in the 
United States seems to have been passing through a crisis of 
languor. Perhaps there is no country on the civilized globe where, 
in theory, verse is treated with more respect and, in practice, with 
a greater lack of grave consideration than America. No conjecture 
as to the reason of this must be attempted here, further than to suggest 
that the extreme value set upon sharpness, ingenuity and rapid 
mobility is obviously calculated to depreciate and to condemn the 
quiet practice of the most meditative of the arts. Hence we find that 
it is what is called "humorous" verse which is mainly in fashion on 
the western side of the Atlantic. Those rhymes are most warmly 

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Estimates Of His Poetry 

welcomed which play the most preposterous tricks with language, 
which dazzle by the most mountebank swiftness of turn, and which 
depend most for their effect upon paradox and the negation of sober 
thought. It is probable that the diseased craving for what is "smart," 
"snappy" and wide-awake, and the impulse to see everything fore- 
shortened and topsy-turvy, must wear themselves out before cooler 
and more graceful tastes again prevail in imaginative literature. 

Whatever be the cause, it is certain that this is not a moment 
when serious poetry, of any species, is flourishing in the United 
States. The absence of anything like a common impulse among 
young writers, of any definite and intelligible, if excessive, parti pris, 
is immediately observable if we contrast the American, for instance, 
with the French poets of the last fifteen years. Where there is no 
school and no clear trend of executive ambition, the solitary artist, 
whose talent forces itself up into the light and air, suffers unusual 
difficulties, and runs a constant danger of being choked in the aimless 
mediocrity that surrounds him. We occasionally meet with a poet in 
the history of literature, of whom we are inclined to say, charming as 
he is, he would have developed his talent more evenly and conspicu- 
ously — with greater decorum, perhaps — if he had been accompanied 
from the first by other young men like-minded, who would have 
formed for him an atmosphere and cleared for him a space. This is 
the one regret I feel in contemplating, as I have done for years past, 
the ardent and beautiful talent of Mr. Cawein. I deplore the fact 
that he seems to stand alone in his generation; I think his poetry 
would even have been better than it is, and its qualities would cer- 
tainly have been more clearly perceived, and more intelligently 
appreciated, if he were less isolated. In his own country, at this 
particular moment, in this matter of serious nature-painting in lyric 
verse, Mr. Cawein possesses what Cowley would have called "a 
monopoly of wit." In one of his lyrics [in "Intimations of the 
Beautiful"], Mr. Cawein asks: 

The song-birds, are they flown away. 
The song-birds of the summer-time. 
That sang their souls into the day. 
And set the laughing hours to rhyme? 
No cat-bird scatters through the hush 
The sparkling crystals of her song; 
Within the woods no hermit-thrush 
Trails an enchanted flute along. 

To this inquiry, the answer is: The only hermit-thrush now 
audible seems to sing from Louisville, Kentucky. America will, we 
may be perfectly sure, calm herself into harmony again, and possess 
once more her school of singers. In those coming days, history may 

355 



Madison C aw e i n 

perceive in Mr. Cawein the golden link that bound the music of the 
past to the music of the future through an interval of comparative 
tunelessness. 

The career of Mr. Madison Cawein is represented to me as being 
most uneventful. He seems to have enjoyed unusual advantages for 
the cultivation and protection of the poetical temperament. He was 
born on the twenty-third of March, 1865, in the metropolis of Ken- 
tucky, the vigorous city of Louisville, on the southern side of the 
Ohio, in the midst of a country celebrated for tobacco and whisky 
and Indian corn. These are commodities which may be consumed in 
excess, but in moderation they make glad the heart of man. They 
represent a certain glow of the earth, they indicate the action of a 
serene and gentle climate upon a rich soil. It was in this delicate and 
voluptuous State of Kentucky that Mr. Cawein was born, that he 
was educated, that he became a poet, and that he has lived ever 
since. His blood is full of the colour and odour of his native landscape. 
The solemn books of history tell us that Kentucky was discovered in 
1769, by Daniel Boone, a hunter. But he first discovers a country 
who sees it first, and teaches the world to see it; no doubt some day 
the city of Louisville will erect in one of its principal squares, a statue 
to "Madison Cawein, who discovered the Beauty of Kentucky." The 
genius of this poet is like one of those deep rivers of his native state, 
which cut paths through the forests of chestnut and hemlock as they 
hurry toward the south and west, brushing with the impulsive fringe 
of their currents the rhododendrons and calmias and azaleas that 
bend from the banks to be mirrored in their flushing waters. 

Mr. Cawein's vocation to poetry was irresistible. I do not 
know that he ever tried to resist it. I have even the idea that a 
little more resistance would have been salutary for a talent which 
nothing could have discouraged, and which opposition might have 
taught the arts of compression and selection. Mr. Cawein suffered 
at first, I think, from lack of criticism more than from lack of eulogy. 
From his earliest writings I seem to gather an impression of a Louis- 
ville more ready to praise what was second-rate than what was 
first-rate, and practically, indeed, without any scale of appreciation 
whatever. This may be a mistake of mine; at all events, Mr. Cawein 
has had more to gain from the passage of years in self-criticism than in 
inspiring enthusiasm. The fount was in him from the first; but it 
bubbled forth before he had digged a definite channel for it. Some- 
times, to this very day, he sports with the principles of syntax as 
Nature played games so long ago with the fantastic caverns of the 
valley of the Green River or with the coral reefs of his own Ohio. 
He has bad rhymes, amazing in so delicate an ear; he has awkwardness 
of phrase not expected in one so plunged in contemplation of the 
eternal harmony of Nature. But these grow fewer and less obtrusive 
as the years pass by. 

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Estimates Of His Poetry 

The virgin timber-forests of Kentucky, the woods of honey- 
locust and buckeye, of white oak and yellow poplar, with their 
clearings full of flowers unknown to us by sight or name, from which 
in the distance are visible the domes of the far-away Cumberland 
Mountains, this seems to be the hunting field of Mr. Cawein's imagi- 
nation. Here all, it must be confessed, has hitherto been unfamiliar 
to the Muses. If Persephone "of ourCumnor cowslips never heard," 
how much less can her attention have been arrested by clusters of 
orchids from the Ocklawaha, or by the song of the whippoorwill,' 
rung out when "the west was hot geranium-red" under the boughs of 
a black-jack on the slopes of Mount Kinnex. "Not here," one is 
inclined to exclaim, "not here, O Apollo, are haunts meet for thee," 
but the art of the poet is displayed by his skill in breaking down these 
prejudices of time and place. Mr. Cawein reconciles us to his strange 
landscape — the strangeness of which one has to admit is mainly one 
of nomenclature, by the exercise of a delightful instinctive pantheism. 
He brings the ancient gods to Kentucky, and it is marvelous how 
quickly they learn to be at home there. Here is Bacchus, with a 
spicy fragment of calamus-root in his hand, trampling down the blue- 
eyed grass, and skipping, with the air of a hunter born, into the 
hickory thicket, to escape Artemis, whose robes, as she passes swiftly 
with her dogs through the woods, startle the humming-birds, silence 
the green tree-frogs, and fill the hot still air with the perfumes of 
peppermint and penny-royal. It is a queer landscape, but one of 
new natural beauties frankly and sympathetically discovered, and 
it forms a mise en scene which, I make bold to say, would have scan- 
dalized neither Keats nor Spenser. 

It was Mr. Howells, ever as generous in discovering new native 
talent as he is unflinching in reproof of the effeteness of European 
taste — who first drew attention to the originality and beauty of Mr. 
Cawein's poetry. The Kentucky poet had, at that time, published 
but one tentative volume, the Blooms of the Berry, in 1887. This was 
followed, in 1888, by The Triumph of Music, and since then hardly a 
year has passed without a slender sheaf of verse from Mr. Cawein's 
garden. Among these (if a single volume is to be indicated), the 
quality which distinguishes him from all other poets, the Kentucky 
flavor, if we may call it so, is perhaps to be most agreeably detected 
in Intimations of the Beautiful. But it is time that I should leave 
the American lyrist to make his own appeal to English ears, with but 
one additional word of explanation, namely, that in this selection Mr. 
Cawein's narrative poems on mediaeval themes, and in general his 
cosmopolitan writings, have been neglected in favor of such lyrics 
as would present him most vividly in his own native landscape, no 
visitor in spirit to Europe, but at home in that bright and exuberant 
West [from "Intimations of the Beautiful"] — 



357 



Madison C aw e i n 

Where, in the hazy morning, runs 

The stony branch that pools and drips, 

Where red-haws and the wild-rose hips 

Are strewn like pebbles; where the sun's 

Own gold seems captured by the weeds ; 

To see, through scintillating seeds. 

The hunters steal with glimmering guns. 

To stand within the dewy ring 

Where pale death smites the bone-set blooms, 

And everlasting's flowers and plumes 

Of mint, with aromatic wing! 

And hear the creek — whose sobbing seems 

A wild man murmuring in his dreams — 

And insect violins that sing. 

So sweet a voice, so consonant with the music of the singers of 
past times, heard in a place so fresh and strange, will surely not 
pass without its welcome from the lovers of genuine poetry. 

— Edmund Gosse. 



North American Review, January, 1908. Reprinted as the Fore- 
word IN Poems by Madison Cawein, 191 1 : 

THE POETRY OF MR. MADISON CAWEIN 
By William Dean Howells 

[Dean of American Letters.] 

When a poet begins writing, and we begin liking his work, we 
own willingly enough that we have not, and cannot have, got the 
compass of his talent. We must wait till he has written more, and we 
have learned to like him more, and even then we should hesitate his 
definition from all that he has done, if we did not very commonly 
qualify ourselves from the latest thing he had done. Between the 
earliest thing and the latest thing there may have been a hundred 
different things, and in his swan-long life of a singer there would 
probably be a hundred yet, and all different. But we take the latest 
as if it summed him up in motive and range and tendency. Many 
parts of his work offer themselves in confirmation of our judgment, 
while those which might impeach it shrink away and hide themselves, 
and leave us to our precipitation, our catastrophe. 

It was surely nothing less than by a catastrophe that I should have 
been so betrayed in the volumes of Mr. Cawein's verse which reached 
me last before the volume of his collected poems. I had read his poetry 
and loved it from the beginning, and in each successive expression of 

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Estimates Of His Poetry 

it, I had delighted in its expanding and maturing beauty. I believe 
I had not failed to own its compass, and when "He touched the 
tender spots of various quills," I had responded to every note of the 
changing music. I did not always respond audibly either in public 
or in private, for it seemed to me that so old a friend might fairly 
rest on the laurels he had helped bestow. But when that last volume 
came, I said to myself, "This applausive silence has gone on 
long enough. It is time to break it with open appreciation. 
Still," I said "I must guard against too great appreciation; I must mix 
in a little depreciation, to show that I have read attentively, critically, 
authoritatively." So I applied myself to the cheapest and easiest 
means of depreciation, and asked, "Why do you always write Nature 
poems? Why not Human Nature poems?" or the like. But in seizing 
upon an objection so obvious that I ought to have known it was 
superficial, I had wronged a poet, who had never done me harm, but 
only good, in the very terms and conditions of his being a poet. I 
had not stayed to see that his nature poetry was instinct with human 
poetry, with his human poetry, with mine, with yours. I had made 
his reproach what ought to have been his finest praise, what is always 
the praise of poetry when it is not artificial and formal. I ought to 
have said, as I had seen, that not one of his lovely landscapes in which 
I could discover no human figure, but thrilled with a human presence 
penetrating to it from his most sensitive and subtle spirit until it was 
all but painfully alive with memories, with regrets, with longings, 
with hopes, with all that from time to time mutably constitutes us 
men and women, and yet keeps us children. He has the gift, in a 
measure that I do not think surpassed in any poet, of touching some 
smallest or commonest thing in nature and making it live from the 
manifold associations in which we have our being, and glow thereafter 
with an inextinguishable beauty. His felicities do not seem sought; 
rather they seem to seek him, and to surprise him with the delight 
they impart through him. He has the inspiration of the right word, 
and the courage of it, so that though in the first instant you may be 
challenged, you may be revolted, by something that you might have 
thought uncouth, you are presently overcome by the happy bravery 
of it, and gladly recognize that no other word of those verbal saints or 
aristocrats, dedicated to the worship or service of beauty, would at 
all so well have conveyed the sense of it as this or that plebeian. 

If I began indulging myself in the pleasure of quotation, or the 
delight of giving proofs of what I say, I should soon and far transcend 
the modest bounds which the editor has set my paper. But the reader 
may take it from me that no other poet, not even of the great Eliza- 
bethan range, can outword this poet when it comes to choosing some 
epithet fresh from the earth or air, and with the morning sun or light 
upon it, for an emotion or experience in which the race renews its 
youth from generation to generation. He is of the kind of Keats and 

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Madison C a w e i n 

Shelley and Wordsworth and Coleridge, in that truth to observance 
and experience of nature and the joyous expression of it, which are 
the dominant characteristics of his art. It is imaginable that the 
thinness of the social world in the Middle West threw the poet upon 
the communion with the fields and woods, the days and nights, the 
changing seasons, in which another great nature poet of ours declares 
they "speak in various language." But nothing could be farther from 
the didactic mood in which "communion with the various forms" of 
nature casts the Puritanic soul of Bryant, than the mood in which 
this German-blooded, Kentucky-born poet, who keeps throughout 
his song the sense of a perpetual and inalienable youth, with a spirit 
as pagan as that which breathes from Greek sculpture — but happily 
not more pagan. Most modern poets who are antique are rather 
over-Hellenic, in their wish not to be English or French, but there is 
nothing voluntary in Mr. Cawein's naturalization in the older world 
of myth and fable ; he is too sincerely and solely a poet to be a poseur; 
he has his eyes everywhere except on the spectator, and his affair is 
to report the beauty that he sees, as if there were no one by to hear. 

An interesting and charming trait of his poetry is its constant 
theme of youth and its limit within the range that the emotions and 
aspirations of youth take. He might indeed be called the poet of 
youth if he resented being called the poet of nature; but the poet of 
youth, be it understood, of vague regrets, of "tears, idle tears," of 
"long, long thoughts," for that is the real youth, and not the 
youth of the supposed hilarity, the attributive recklessness, the daring 
hopes. Perhaps there is some such youth as this, but it has not its 
home in the breast of any young poet, and he rarely utters it; at best 
he is of a light melancholy, a smiling wistfulness, and upon the whole, 
October is more to his mind than May. 

In Mr. Cawein's work, therefore, what is not the expression of 
the world we vainly and rashly call the inanimate world, is the hardly 
more dramatized, and not more enchantingly imagined story of 
lovers, rather unhappy lovers. He finds his own in this sort far and 
near; in classic Greece, in heroic England, in romantic Germany, 
where the blue-flower blows, but not less in beautiful and familiar 
Kentucky, where the blue-grass shows itself equally the emblem of 
poetry, and the mouldering log in the cabin wall or the woodland 
path is of the same poetic value as the marble of the ruined temple or 
the stone of the crumbling castle. His singularly creative fancy 
breathes a soul into every scene; his touch leaves everything that was 
dull to the sense before glowing in the light of joyful recognition. He 
classifies his poems by different names, and they are of different 
themes, but they are after all of that unity which I have been trying, 
all too shirkingly, to suggest. One, for instance, is the pathetic story 
which tells itself in the lyrical eclogue, "One Day and Another". 
It is the conversation, prolonged from meeting to meeting between 

360 



Estimates Of His Poetry 

two lovers whom death parts; but who recurrently find themselves 
and each other in the gardens and the woods, and on the waters which 
they tell each other of and together delight in. The effect is that 
which is truest to youth and love, for these transmutations of emotion 
form the disguise of self which makes passion tolerable; but mechani- 
cally the result is a series of nature-poems. More genuinely dramatic 
are such pieces as the "The Feud," "Ku-klux," and "The Lynchers," 
three out of many; but one which I value more because it is worthy 
of Wordsworth, or of Tennyson in a Wordsworthian mood, is "The 
Old Mill," ["The Old Water-Mill"] where, with all the wonted charm 
of his landscape art, Mr. Cawein gives us a strongly local and novel 
piece of character painting. 

I deny myself with increasing reluctance the pleasure of quoting 
the stanzas, the verses, the phrases, the epithets which lure me by 
scores and hundreds in his poems. It must suffice me to say that I 
do not know any poem of his which has not some such a felicity; I 
do not know any poem of his which is not worth reading, at least the 
first time, and often the second and the third time, and so on as 
often as you have the chance of recurring to it. Some disappoint and 
others delight more than others; but there is none but in greater or 
less measure has the witchery native to the poet, and his place and 
his period. 

It is only in order of his later time that I would put Mr. Cawein 
first among those Mid-Western poets, of whom he is the youngest. 
Poetry in the Middle West has had its development in which it was 
eclipsed by the splendor, transitory if not vain, of the California 
school. But it is deeply rooted in the life of the region, and is as true 
to its origins as any faithful portraiture of the Mid-Western landscape 
could be; you could not mistake the source of the poem or the picture. 
In a certain tenderness of light and coloring, the poems would recall 
the mellowed masterpieces of the older literatures rather than those 
of the New England school, where conscience dwells almost rebukingly 
with beauty. Perhaps if I name Mr. Cawein with Mr. James Whit- 
comb Riley, and with both those poets as true and fine, Mr. J.J. Piatt 
and Mrs. S. M. B. Piatt, I shall be making my meaning clearer. 
No doubt, there are others who will not at the moment name them- 
selves to me, but keep therrtselves for the reader's less hurried recol- 
lection, and with whom he will like to group these. If the Middle 
West had produced no poets but these, she would have uttered her- 
self in poetry in a voice not mistakable for any other. Each of them 
is an artist, and with their native quality in common, each has a 
peculiar charm. It is enough to say that Mr. Cawein's poetry has a 
beauty which is enchantingly its own, and with a family favor recog- 
nizable in the work of the others, is otherwise akin to that only as it 
is akin to what is beautiful in all poetry. — W. D. Howells. 



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Madison C a iv e i n 

South Atlantic Quarterly, July, 1915. Reprinted in Peckham's 
Present-Day American Poetry and Other Essays, Boston, 1917: 

MADISON CAWEIN 
By H. Houston Peckham 

[Instructor in English in Purdue University.] 

The old adage about the prophet without honor in his own 
country seldom applies in the South. In general, that section of our 
country acclaims her literary men, as well as her other celebrities, 
with peculiar loyalty, peculiar pride. It was scarcely three years ago, 
if memory errs not, that Southern critics from Baltimore to El Paso, 
from Dallas to Jacksonville, were chiding Professor Brander Matthews 
for his shameful damning-with-faint-praise of writers born south of 
Mason and Dixon's Line. Yet I am persuaded that the South does 
not begin to appreciate one of her most gifted sons, the foremost 
American poet of our generation, the lamented Madison Cawein. 

An estimate of a recently deceased author should, I suppose, 
have a great deal to say about that author's personality. Unfortun- 
ately, however, I do not feel qualified to ofYer much testimony re- 
garding the personality of Cawein. For a brief time several years 
ago I had some correspondence with him, and on one happy occasion 
I had the pleasure and honor of conversing with him; but Cawein 
reminiscences I must leave to those who knew the beloved Kentucky 
singer well. One thing I will venture, though; and that is that even 
slight acquaintance with him revealed his proverbial modesty. Cawein 
was an unassuming man, and thereby hangs more than one interesting 
tale. One of the most charming of these little incidents is related by 
a close lifelong friend of the poet's. Cawein sadly underrated some of 
his best work, and on one occasion he was about to destroy a par- 
ticularly fine lyric. The lyric was rescued in the nick of time and 
published without the author's knowledge; and so completely had 
Cawein allowed the piece to pass from his mind that when he saw it 
in print he did not recognize it as the child of his own fancy. 

But though Madison Cawein depreciated some of his best poems, 
he seldom made the mistake, all too common among poets, of con- 
sidering his bad verse good. True, he was prone to overestimate his 
epic powers — he looked upon his ponderous, tedious "Accolon of 
Gaul" as one of his supreme masterpieces; but, all in all, he had 
exceedingly good knowledge of his limitations. To appreciate this 
fact, one has but to note the uniform technical excellence of Cawein's 
work. 

Much has been written about Madison Cawein — so much, 
indeed, that one who attempts to add a few words must guard against 
the danger of wearying the reader with threadbare truisms. Cawein's 

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Estimates Of His Poetry 

amazing fecundity, his irresistible tunefulness, his broad range, his 
ardently romantic imagination, his human sympathies, his dramatic 
powers, his intense love for his craft, and his tremendous influence 
upon the lesser poets of his day — these are facts of such ancient repute 
that we must not tarry with them here. 

A thing not nearly so well known about Cawein is that he was 
an adept in handling the sort of humorous dialect verse that we 
associate most closely with the name of James Whitcomb Riley. 
Cawein seldom wrote in this vein; but when he did, it was with the 
touch of a master. A few stanzas of "Corncob Jones, An Oldham- 
County Weather Philosopher" in The Republic will prove this: 

"Who is Corncob Jones?" you say. 

Beatingest man and talkingest: 
Talk and talk th' enduring day, 

Never even stop to rest, 
Keep on talking that a-way, 

Talk you dead, or do his best. 

We were there in that old barn, 
Loafing round and swapping lies: 

There was Wiseheart, talking corn, 
Me and Raider boosting ryes, 

When old Corncob sprung a yarn 
Just to give us a surprise. 

"Why, as I have said tofore," 

(Here he aimed a streak of brown 

At a hornet on the floor, 

Got him too) "you put hit down 

To experience, nothing more, — 
Whut they call hit there in town. 

"Natur' jest rubs in the thing — 

Jest won't let a man ferget: 
Keeps hit up spring arter spring — 

Why? — Jest 'cause now you kin bet. 
Blamed blackberries bloom, by Jing! 

They jest need the cold and wet." 

Let me return, however, to more salient points. Let me dwell, 
at more length, upon two items which are perhaps quite as obvious, 
quite as widely recognized, as any which I have mentioned. One 
reason, in my opinion, why Cawein is bound to go down in literary 
history as one of our most considerable American bards is that he 
had profound and wholesome respect for the standard poetic forms. 
Long after erudite students shall have ceased to worry their brains 

363 



- Madison C a w e i n 

about the conceits of Donne and Herbert and Crashaw; long after 
most of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" have grown sear and 
have returned unto dust; long, long after men have forgotten that 
some flowing-haired, horn-spectacled critic once pronounced Ezra 
Pound wonderful, or that Ezra Pound ever lived and moved and had 
his being, a grateful public will rejoice that Madison Cawein sat at 
the feet of Milton the stately, and Keats the lovely, and hearkened 
not to the clanging cymbals of some freakish innovator, some strident- 
ly clamourous mountebank outside the gates of the sacred temple 
of Poesy. Cawein carved not with fragile implements. The ancient 
and honorable sonnet and the everlasting iambus were among his 
chief working-tools. And why should it not be so? Why, in the 
name of Common Sense, should a poet seek for new mediums of 
expression when with the old he could sing so beautifully as thus? 
["March"]: 

This is the tomboy month of all the year, 

March, who comes shouting o'er the winter hills. 
Waking the world with laughter, as she wills, 

Or wild halloos a windflower in her ear. 

She stops a moment by the half-thawed mere 

And whistles to the wind, and straightway shrills 
The hyla's song, and hoods of daffodils 

Crowd golden 'round her, leaning their heads to hear. 

Then through the woods, that drip with all their eaves, 
Her mad hair blown about her, loud she goes 
Singing and calling to the naked trees; 

And straight the oilets of the little leaves 
Open their eyes in wonder, rows on rows. 
And the first bluebird bugles to the breeze. 

Or thus [from "Dream Road"]: 

I took the road again last night 
On which my boyhood's hills look down ; 
The old road leading from the town, 
The village there below the height, 
Its cottage homes, all huddled brown, 
Each with its blur of light. 

The old road, full of ruts, that leads, 
A winding streak of limestone-grey, 
Over the hills and far away; 
That's crowded here by arms of weeds 
And elbows of rail-fence, asway 
With flowers that no one heeds. 

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Estimates Of His Poetry 

The cricket and the katydid 

Pierced silence with their stinging sounds; 

The firefly went its golden rounds, 

Where, lifting slow one sleepy lid, 

The baby rosebud dreamed; and mounds 

Of lilies breathed half-hid. 

The white moon waded through a cloud, 
Like some pale woman through a pool ; 
And in the darkness, close and cool 
I felt a form against me bowed, 
Her breast to mine ; and deep and full 
Her maiden heart beat loud. 

But the most important fact about Cawein is, I think, that he 
was a great nature poet, the greatest that his country has yet pro- 
duced. When we mention the poetry of Bryant and Emerson, our 
first thought is of nature; yet how slight, how general is most of their 
nature poetry compared with Cawein's! And what other American 
nature poet dare we mention in the same breath with Cawein? Every 
season of the year, every mood of earth and sky, well-nigh every bird 
and flower and weed of his native Kentucky was so beautiful to him 
as to be celebrated in song. No one denies Cawein's love for the 
little things of nature, his marvelously close observation, his minute 
accuracy of description. Indeed some have charged that he peered 
too closely, that he crowded his canvas too full of rank undergrowth, 
that he made his picture as bewilderingly prolix and as wearisomely 
prosy as the index to a treatise on botany or ornithology. But they 
who make this charge know not whereof they speak. Ten to one, 
they have never learned to love and reverence Nature herself. Doubt- 
less they and their ilk would be happier with Dryden than with Keats, 
more contented in a drawing-room at any season or hour than in 
Arcadia on the loveliest morning God ever made. 

A few days ago I casually thumbed a volume of Cawein. It was 
like the calling of a thousand pleasant voices from pastures and 
woodland and roadside and farm. Now the whippoorwill and the 
sheepbells welcomed me, and a lamp was lit in some distant farm- 
house. Now it was August, oppressive with dust and drought, 
ragweed and browned meadows. Now a clear pool with speckled 
trout invited me. Now the scene changed to winter, stern with 
yelling winds and smothered white fields. And anon I passed a 
deserted saw-mill, a lonely, cabinless chimney, a broken gate, and a 
dilapidated picket-fence, all starred with morning-glories and sweet- 
potato blossoms. "The same old pictures again and again and again!" 
you cry perchance. Yes, yes; I'll grant you that! And why not? 

365 



Madison C a w e i n 

Does an operatic air lose its tunefulness by recurring twice or thrice? Is 
the night less lovely for having ten thousand stars instead of one? 
Is the rosebush less sweet because of its hundred roses? 

Say that Madison Cawein was sometimes artificial and often 
commonplace. Charge him with being too hasty, too prolific, too 
repetitious. Point out his inferiority, as a philosopher, to at least 
a score of other American bards, past and present. But verily, if 
you know Cawein and nature well, you will never dream of denying 
that he was a consummate painter of rural scenes. And though he 
may have taken you on a dozen delightful journeys to Fairyland; 
though he may often have delighted your soul with smooth numbers 
and easy rhymes; though he may even have comforted you with some 
homely bit of healthy optimism; your happiest remembrance of him, 
I daresay, will be that he taught you to approach Nature, advancing 
with awakened senses and open heart. — H. Houston Peckham. 

Sewanee Review, October, 1915: 

THE OTHER MADISON CAWEIN 

By Anna Blanche McGill 

[Literary Critic and Poet.] 

Henry James once took his own and his adopted countrymen 
to task for "granting a prodigious ear to some one manifestation of 
an author's talent and caring nothing whatsoever for the others." 

From a sympathy thus limited the late Madison Cawein in some 
measure suffered. Cordially applauded for certain achievements, he 
often failed to receive due recognition for his other activities. Upon 
his conspicuous gifts as observer and interpreter of the exquisite in 
nature hearty acclaim was bestowed; but meantime in other fields he 
exercised his talent with a charm and an artistry which might have 
secured his fame, had not his eminent and original success with the 
delicate and the fanciful focussed critical taste — occasionally to the 
neglect of his other poetizings. 

The particular dictum which Mr. Cawein himself never relished 
was that which pronounced his work deficient in human interest. 
With some measure of truth a discriminating critic once interpreted 
this charge as high praise. Just the fact, said this critic, that his 
poetry transports to a region different from the work-a-day, dragon- 
slaying world is one of its prime charms; thus it fulfils that excellent 
function of art — the refreshment of the spirit in a diviner ether, the 
liberation of the fancy into an ampler air than that of the sometimes 
all too human. 

However apposite this praise none the less is it true that one of 
the chief sources of Mr. Cawein's appeal may be traced to certain 

36G 



Estimates Of His Poetry 

essentially human elements in his poetry. For, though the materials 
of his muse were largely of that world familiarly generalized as 
"Nature," it is somewhat paradoxical that, with a frequency so 
repeated as to have become characteristic, those materials when finally 
shaped into poetry were mingled with ingredients distinctly human. 
This "human" note resulted partly from the fact that the poet's 
materials were presented through a definite human personality 
intensely loving what it reproduced. Moreover, those materials were 
frequently so rich with associations deeply imbedded in the human 
heart, its affections, its memories. 

However inadequately general criticism has noted this, there is 
one instance of greater discrimination which makes amends for lesser 
visions. Mr. Howells, so prompt and generous in his recognition of 
Mr. Cawein's early work, spoke again a few years ago in terms which 
did honor to the poet and did still more honor to Mr. Howells' own 
magnanimity and critical integrity. With fine simplicity correcting 
or supplementing one of his earlier comments, he said: "I had not 
stayed to see that his nature poetry was instinct with human poetry, 

with mine, with yours I ought to have said, as I had seen, 

that not one of his lovely landscapes in which I could discover no 
human figure, but thrilled with a human presence penetrating to it 
from his most sensitive and subtle spirit until it was all but pain- 
fully alive with memories, with regrets, with longings, with hopes, 
with all that from time to time mutably constitutes us men and 
women, and yet keeps us children." 

In poem after poem lies illustration of Mr. Howells' text. Among 
Mr. Cawein's most typical inspirations were ancestral fields and farms, 
old gardens, old homes among the hills ["Old Homes"]: 

Old homes among the hills! I love their gardens. 

Their old rock-fences, that our day inherits; 
Their doors, 'round which the great trees stand like wardens. 

Their paths, down which the shadows march like spirits; 
Broad doors and paths that reach bird-haunted gardens. 

I see them gray among their ancient acres. 

Severe of front, their gables lichen-sprinkled — 

Like gentle-hearted, solitary Quakers, 

Grave and religious, with kind faces wrinkled — 

Serene among their memory-hallowed acres. 

Their gardens, banked with roses and with lilies — 

Those sweet aristocrats of all the flowers — 
Where Springtime coins her gold in dafifodillies, 

And Autumn mints her marigolds in showers, 
And all the hours are toilless as the lilies. 

367 



Madison C aw e i n 

I love their orchards where the gay woodpecker 

FHts, flashing o'er you, like a winged jewel ; 
Their woods, whose floors of moss the squirrels checker 

With half-hulled nuts; and where, in cool renewal, 
The wild brooks laugh, and raps the red woodpecker. 

Old homes! Old hearts! upon my soul forever 

Their peace and gladness lie like tears and laughter; 

Like love they touch me, through the years that sever, 
With simple faith; like friendship, draw me after 

The dreamy patience that is theirs forever. 

Just as characteristic is such a mood as was the poet's persistent 
aspiration toward ideal beauty. It is just as typical as his remarkable 
response to the delicate and exquisite in color, sound, fragrance, 
movement — a response which ranks his work with the most enchant- 
ingly sensuous poetry in English or American literature. If to walk 
with him in the woods was a lesson in the swift reaction of the human 
senses — to the thin song of grig or cricket, the flutter of a twilight- 
moth's wings, the hermit thrush's magic flute, to the iridescence of 
autumn or to some patch of bluets whose pale pastel was sometimes 
too far away to arrest ordinary vision — so now, no less, to turn his 
page is to be aware of unmistakable emotional response. * Over and 
over again upon the tapestry of his page are embroidered scenes 
intimately associated with human destiny [from "The Old Home"]: 

An old lane, an old gate, an old house by a tree ; 
A wild wood, a wild brook — they will not let me be; 
In boyhood I knew them and still they call to me; 

Now it is an old barn, "low, swallow-swept and grey." And now 
[from "The Old Spring"]: 

Fern and leaf-hid gleaming homeward, 
Drips the wildwood spring I knew, 
Drips the spring my boyhood knew. 

Still again the "long, long thoughts" are stirred by some homelier 
but scarcely less beguiling ancient water mill ["The Old Water Mill"] 
with its — 

.... cob-webbed stairs and loft and grain-strewn floor, 
Thy doors — like some brown honest hand of toil 
And honorable with labor of the soil, 
Forever open. 

The simple and happy trope of the last lines is indicative of Mr. 
Cawein's image-making gift in characteristic play. It illustrates 
his frequent employment of some human quality to emphasize some 

368 



Estimates Of His Poetry 

aspect of nature and, vice versa, his finding in nature some analogy 
for a human personality or situation. With particular felicity this 
technical trait is exemplified in such lines as these [from "At the 
Lane's End"]: 

The garden there — where the soft sky clears 
Like an old sweet face that has dried its tears. 

One of the most impressive and sustained instances of this trope- 
making occurs in "A Voice on the Wind" — a poem palpitant with 
both human emotion and feeling for Nature's pathetic aspects: 

Who is she who wanders alone. 
When the wind drives sheer and the rain is blown? 
Who walks all night and makes her moan: 

"O my children, come home!" 
Whose face is raised to the blinding gale, 
Whose hair blows black and whose eyes are pale, 
While over the world goes by her wail, — 

"O my children, come home, come home! 

O my children, come home!" 
'Tis the Spirit of Autumn, no man sees. 
The mother of Death and Mysteries, 
Who cries on the wind all night to these, 

"O my children, come home!" 
The Spirit of Autumn, pierced with pain. 
Calling her children home again. 
Death and Dreams, through ruin and rain — 

"O, my children, come home, come home! 

O my children, come home!" 

Meantime with even greater copiousness Mr. Cawein's familiar 
Nature World offered him comparisons when he wished to poetize 
human emotion or episode. Effectively was he thus served in the 
beautiful lines of "A Flower of the Fields," a poem subtly and 
artistically presenting a story against a lovely and humanized back- 
ground : 

All seemed the same: the martin-box — 

Sun-warped with pigmy balconies — 

Still stood with all its twittering flocks. 

Perched on its pole above the peas 
And silvery-seeded onion-stocks. 

The clover-pink and the rose; the clump 
Of coppery sunflowers, with the heat 

Sick to the heart; the garden stump. 
Red with geranium pots, and sweet 

With moss and ferns, this side the pump. 

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Madison C aw e i n 

Noon nodded ; dreamier, lonesomer 

For one long, plaintive, forest-side 
Bird-quaver. — And I knew me near 

Some heartbreak anguish. . . . She had died. 
I felt it, and no need to hear! 

I passed the quince and pear-tree; where 
All up the porch, a grape-vine trails — 

How strange, that fruit, whatever air 
Or earth it grows in, never fails 

To find its native flavor there! 

And she was as a flower, too. 

That grows its proper bloom and scent 

No matter what the soil; she, who, 
Born better than her place, still lent 

Grace to the lowliness she knew. 

Still another engaging mirroring of the human heart in the larger 
heart of Nature is that achieved in the poem "Unrequited," with 
its fine similitude for an obdurate breast: 

So have I seen a clear October pool, 
Cold liquid topaz, set within the sear 

Gold of the woodland, tremorless and cool, 
Reflecting all the heartbreak of the year. 

So have I seen a rose set round with thorn. 
Sung to and sung to by a bird of spring. 

And when, breast-pierced, the bird lay all forlorn, 
The rose bloomed on, fair and unnoticing. 

But throughout those numerous poems wherein appear both 
nature and the human, Mr. Cawein's art was never happier than in 
those several lines which the reader's memory may frame as "Land- 
scapes with figures." What Wordsworth repeatedly did for the 
Westmoreland peasants and what the nineteenth century French 
painters did for the open-air toilers of France, Mr. Cawein, with 
faithful, sympathetic brush, did for the harvesters, the berriers, the 
vintagers of his native land. Types of healthy toil, of pastoral 
romance, these figures are characteristically American, indeed often 
Kentuckian, yet in a sense also universal. It is significant that 
Mr. Gosse, in his English edition of Mr. Cawein's work, felt impelled 
to include several of these portraits — that of "The Tollman's Daugh- 
ter," for instance: 

370 



Estimates Of His Poetry 

.... waist-deep among the briers; .... 

For her I know where'er she trod 

Each dew-drop raised a looking-glass 
To flash her beauty from the grass; 

That wild-flowers bloomed along the sod, 

And whispered perfume when she smiled; 

The wood-birds hushed to hear her song. 

For fidelity and charm of presentation several poems of this 
order are not unworthy of standing beside the "Solitary Reaper" 
and other Wordsworthian figure-pieces, or Keats' Ruth "in tears 
amid the alien corn." Yet unlike these classic examples many of 
the Caweinian figures take their charm less from their note of pathos 
or philosophy than from their wholesome vigor and idyllic quality. 
They are nearer to Tennyson's "Dora," or "The Miller's Daughter." 
No brothers of "The Man With the Hoe," as Edwin Markham saw 
him, are these types — if none the less authentic [from "Forest 
and Field"]: 

The brawny-throated harvesters, 
Their red brows beaded with the heat. 

By twos and threes among the wheat 

The binders — men and maids that sing 
Like some mad troop of piping Pan 



Or these [from "Summer"]: 

Come where the reapers whet the scythe, 

Where golden sheaves are heaped, where berries blythe 

With willow basket and with pail, 
Swarm knoll and plain ; 

Where flowers freckle every vale 
And beauty goes with hands of berry stain. 

Still more beguiling is such a group as this[[from "Forest and Field"] 

And down the orchard vistas — young, 
A hickory basket by him swung, 
A straw-hat, 'gainst the sloping sun 
Drawn brim-broad o'er his face — he strode 
As if he looked to find some one, 

His eyes far-fixed beyond the road 

And where the cows' melodious bells 
Trailed music up and down the dells, .... 
He saw her waiting, fair and slim, 

371 



Madison C aw e i n 

Her pail forgotten there for him 

Across the rambhng fence she leaned 
Her fresh round arms all white and bare, 
Her artless beauty, bonnet-screened. 
Rich-colored with its auburn hair. 
A wood-thrush gurgled in a vine — 
Ah! 'tis his step, 'tis he she hears. 

The imagists, the sociological versifiers, and other exponents of 
the contemporary muse's dernier cri, have endeavored to lead us far 
from this kind of poetry. But there are many to whom it still appeals. 
It is as characteristic of certain aspects of America as Whittier's or 
Whitman's poems, or our multitudinous short stories, infused with 
local color, are of their respective scenes and inspirations. 

Though the beauty of his Kentucky meadows was always per- 
suading Mr. Cawein to reproduce its idyllic features and figures, not 
always were his landscapes with figures so serene and amiable. For 
instance, his striking poem, "The Feud," for all its concessions here 
and there to Beauty, is just as successful in rendering the wild and 
undisciplined in nature and man as other poems are in memorializing 
the calm and fair: 

Rocks, trees and rocks; and down a mossy stone 

The murmuring ooze and trickle of a stream 
Through bushes where the mountain spring lies lone — 

A gleaning cairngorm where the shadows dream — 

And one wild road winds like a saffron seam. 

Here sang the thrush, whose pure mellifluous note 
Dripped golden sweetness on the fragrant June; 

Here cat- and blue-bird and wood-sparrow wrote 
Their presence on the silence with a tune; 
And here the fox drank 'neath the mountain moon 



A wasp buzzed by, and then a butterfly 
In orange and amber, like a floating flame; 

And then a man, hard -eyed and very sly. 

Gaunt-cheeked and haggard and a little lame, 
With an old rifle down the mountain came. 

He listened, drinking from a flask he took 
Out of the ragged pocket of his coat; 

Then all around him cast a stealthy look; 

Lay down, and watched an eagle soar and float, 
His fingers clutching at his hairy throat. 

372 



Estimates Of His Poetry 

The shades grew longer, and each Cumberland height 
Loomed, framed in splendours of the dolphin dusk. 

Around the road a horseman rode in sight; 

Young, tall, blond-bearded. Silent, grim, and brusque. 
He in the thicket aimed. — The gun rang husk; 

And echoes barked among the hills and made 

Repeated instants of the shot's distress — 
Then silence — and the trampled bushes swayed — 

Then silence, packed with murder and the press 

Of distant hoof that galloped riderless. 

Those who know Mr. Cawein chiefly as interpreter of the ex- 
quisite, worshipper of Ideal Beauty, as devotee of classic divinities — 
faun, nymph, dryad, of Oberon and Queen Mab — may here find a 
sinewy expression, a virile imagination as typical, as adequate for 
the theme as are his delicate fancy and his exquisite phrasing for his 
more Ariel-like moods and visions. 

So fresh and ardent was Mr. Cawein's work at its best, so happy 
and abundant were his native wood-notes wild, insufficient recogni- 
tion was sometimes given to his craftsmanship. Though by no means 
was his technique always perfect, by no means was his artistry 
entirely negligible. It was evident in his several feud poems and in 
many others of less melodramatic quality. This craftsmanship was 
often displayed in the evocation of atmosphere and in the focussing 
of dramatic episode or significant emotion in a final line or stanza. 
Extraordinarily sensitive himself to "spirit of place," Mr. Cawein 
was often most impressive in poems wherein the influences of the 
scene were interpreted as being no less potent than those of articulate 
human personality. An example of this is in the final division of 
"At the Lane's End." This intensely human poem presents — if by 
suggestion rather than explicit narrative — a drama of human lapse, 
spiritual awakening, spiritual renewal. Its earlier portion pictures an 
old home: 

The clouds roll up and the clouds roll down 

Over the roof of the little town ; 

Out in the fields where the pike winds by 

Fields of clover and bottoms of rye. 

You will find the pales of the fallen fence, 

And the tangled orchard and vineyard, dense 

With the weedy neglect of the thirty years 

And here was a nook for the princess plumes, 
The snap-dragons and the poppy-blooms. 
Mother's sweet-williams and pansy flowers, 
And the morning glories' bewildered bowers, 

373 



Madison C aw e i n 

Tipping their cornucopias up 

For the humming-birds that came to sup 

And the old log-house where my innocence died, 
With my boyhood buried side by side. 

Then follow lines which more forcibly than description press home 
the point of the poem; no comment is needed to heighten or praise 
the contrast between the tender, dreaming beauty of the deserted 
home and the blighted, wasted heart of its returning prodigal: 

Shall a man with face as withered and gray 
As a wasp-nest stowed in a loft away — 
Where the hornets haunt and the mortar drops 
From the loosened log of the clap-board tops — 
Whom vice has aged as the rotting rooms 
The rain where memories haunt the glooms; 
A hitch in his joints like the rheum that gnars 
In the rasping hinge of the door that jars; 
A harsh crackling throat like the old stone flue 
Where the swallows build the summers through; 
Shall a man, I say, with the spider sins 
That the long years spin in the outs and ins 
Of his soul, returning to see once more 

His boyhood's home 

Shall he not take comfort and know the truth 
In its thread-bare raiment of falsehood? — Yea! 
In his crumbled past he shall kneel and pray, 
Like a pilgrim come to the shrine again 
Of the homely saints that shall soothe his pain, 
And arise and depart, made clean from stain! 

This poem belongs to Mr. Cawein's earlier period of work, but its 
mood and tone recur in some of his later poems. These more and 
more bore witness to a deepening of thought and feeling. His work 
in this vein compares by no means unfavorably with that of others 
less narrowly identified than he with the sensuous, the old delectable 
world of ever-changing hue, of beautiful form and bewitching sound — 
the dream-peopled landscape of "Genius Loci" — 

For all around me upon field and hill 
Enchantment lies as of mysterious flutes. 

Briefly and memorably are spiritual values affirmed in such 
poems as "The Over-soul," "Prayer for Old Age," "The Shadow," 
and the oft-quoted sonnet, "Our Dreams," beginning, "Spare us 
our dreams." Marked by a spiritual tone still more sustained are 

374 



Estimates Of His Poetry 

three lyric dramas in the volume entitled The Shadow Garden and 
Other Plays. If no great praise may be accorded to the dramatic 
merits of these plays, high claim may be made for the rare beauty 
and seriousness of their spiritual tone and poetic art. The phantasy 
which gives the book its name is as ethereal as some of the earlier 
Maeterlinckian dramas, without, however, any suggestion of morbid- 
ness. The scenes reverse the formula of some of the Flemish play- 
wright's works — by moving not to a tragic denouement but to a finale 
of reconciliation and happiness. Gossamer-fine the texture of this 
phantasy, its subsidiary characters being those lovely small things 
of earth which charmed the poet's senses. But for all its dream-spun 
woof, it is definitely woven across by spiritual beauty. Its dominant 
idea is: the wisdom of holding fast to the Dream; a fidelity whereby 
the erring and disillusioned may yet be free — "as young-eyed In- 
nocence" — of the heart's Eden so alluringly adumbrated in "The 
Shadow Garden." 

For all the ethical implications of this phantasy, its author in 
theory and practice shunned moralizing perhaps more resolutely 
than did any other poet of his day who took his art seriously. His 
was a philosophy different from that of Sainte-Beuve about the True, 
the Good, the Beautiful — Mr. Cawein would have chosen for his own 
motto, the Beautiful, trusting the True and the Good to take care of 
themselves. That they sometimes do— even to the point of ulti- 
mately and significantly gaining the allegiance of one originally 
dedicated to the third of their great trinity — is attested by two other 
dramas in The Shadow Garden. These, "The Witch" and "The 
House of Fear," are fairly solemn in their enunciation of what is 
widely accepted as a genuine spiritual verity. Despite their occa- 
sionally happy freight of sensuous beauty, both are homilies on the 
text that one saving grace can avail to bring the erring back to the 
upward way 

A mite of good 
Within a soul outweighs a ton of evil. 

Pity and Love are the redeeming forces in "The Witch." In 
"The House of Fear" the saving grace is that third of the golden 
virtues to whose potency preacher and poet have done, one sometimes 
thinks, but inadequate justice — Immortal Hope — before whose 
might and splendor vanish Despair and other sombre figures of the 
play. 

For the aesthetic theorists and other philosophers these dramas, 
despite their shortcomings, ofTer material for comment and specula- 
tion; for instance, about that mystery — the power of sensuously 
perceived beauty to exalt the soul and lead it to the verge of that 
Kingdom of Perfection whose three great towers are the Good, the 
True, the Beautiful. For, the statement may be safely ventured, it 

375 



Madison C a w e i n 

was largely through his passion for the loveliness of the visible world 
and its influence upon him that Mr. Cawein advanced to apprehension 
of the inner, no less various and beautiful realm of things spiritual; 
in the earthly fair he came to discern the clue [from "The House of 
Life"]: 

That leads us to His Presence 
Above the starry blue. 

It is not without significance that both worlds, external and 
spiritual, are side by side poetized in some of the most lovely and im- 
passioned lines of his maturity — the conclusion of "The House of 
Fear." Now that he lies dead all too soon, these lines may not in- 
appositely serve as his own exultant epitaph: 

Light breaks around me and the winds of dawn 
Sweep the wild mists of tempest far to sea. 
There is no darkness now, but rivered light, 
Flowing from out the source of boundless day. 
And beauty, who I dreamed was dead, behold, .... 
Beckons me yonder from the daybreak! — there. 

Silver and snow above the infinite blue 

And I am free to run and shout with morn 
Upon her hills, one with the Sons of Heaven, 
And all the stars! .... 

— Anna Blanche McGill. 



The Bellman, August 12, 1916: 

CAWEIN AND RILEY: POETS OF AMERICA 
By Henry Adams Bellows 

[Associate Editor of The Bellman] 

It is regretable and rather curious that, although a year and a 
half has elapsed since the death of Madison Cawein, little or nothing 
seems to have been done to bring together his poetical work and issue 
it in such complete form as to command the critical attention it 
deserves. The recent death of James Whitcomb Riley emphasizes 
what the country lost in losing Cawein, for the two poets belonged, 
despite their differences of manner, to the same school. Both were 
leaders in what may be called the transition period of American 
poetry, bridging the gap between the older poets, Longfellow, Lowell, 

376 



Estimates Of His Poetry 

Whittier and the rest, and the men and women whose activities are 
so new, and often so startling, that their positions as poets are yet 
matters for vigorous debate. With Cawein and Riley both gone, 
that period may be said to have closed; and it was a period that de- 
serves memory and respect. 

Riley was the older of the two by a dozen years, but there was 
by no means so much difference in their literary chronology. Riley's 
first published book, The Old Swimmin' Hole and 'Leven More Poems, 
was published in 1883; Cawein's earliest book. Blooms of the Berry, 
only four years later. For about twenty years they wrote and pub- 
lished side by side, a book every year or two. Then Riley practically 
ceased writing; more and more of the volumes bearing his name, 
which were brought out with unabated frequency, were new editions 
or collections of poems written in his earlier days. Cawein went on, 
up to the time of his death, with unabated energy. The newer ten- 
dencies-<3f poetry in the last decade touched him as they never touched 
Riley; without formally joining the band of the younger poets, he 
felt and expressed the spirit which animated them. Thus, even 
more than Riley, his work formed the connecting link in American 
poetry, and there is much history to be read between the lines of the 
columns from Blooms of the Berry to The Poet and Nature. 

Both Cawein and Riley have been generally praised most highly 
for their Americanism. This does not mean, in either case, that they 
had the slighest tendency to blustering eulogy of their country; their 
Americanism was never ostentatious. But they drew their inspiration 
directly from the life about them, from the nature outside their own 
windows, and the men and women who came and went in their own 
streets. Riley was everywhere known as "the Hoosier poet"; Cawein 
has happily been called "the Laureate of Kentucky." Both deserved 
their titles, as honours and with the implied limitations. Both clearly 
betrayed their environment in their work. Nature in Indiana is not a 
thing of mystical beauty; one would hardly seek refuge from the cares 
and trials of life by getting away from the flat towns and gazing over 
an expanse of equally flat plain. Riley saw, first of all, the towns and 
the people, saw them and loved them. Cawein saw the hills and 
streams and woods of Kentucky; while Riley produced Lockerbie 
Street, Cawein wrote Nature Notes and Impressions. 

Historically, there is no shadow of question that Riley was the 
more interesting of the two, and for the very reason that his work 
was no more than objective, and dealt with people. He was almost 
as much a recorder of the life of his time and place as Mark Twain. 
Apart from the peculiar charm of the best of Riley's poetry, it will 
always be read as a contribution, and an important one, to American 
history. The world — Indiana even — will never again be quite 
the same as it was when Riley loved it and wrote about it. Cawein's 
subjects — nature and nature's reflection of human emotions — have 

377 



Madison C a w e i n 

been available for two thousand years, and will be equally available 
for two thousand more. Kentucky was to him much what the Lake 
Country was to Wordsworth, New England to Whittier. 

For this very reason Cawein's chance of being widely read a 
century after his death is far more nearly equal to Riley's than their 
present popularity would indicate. It is significant that his work 
has been praised by competent English critics quite as highly as by 
American, which is by no means true of Riley's poems. Cawein aimed 
high and the best of his poetry is local only in the sense that its 
pictures of nature take their color from the region where he lived. 
Against that background he expressed the emotions that have always 
been the themes of the best poetry; his claim to enduring greatness 
rests on the sureness of that expression. 

His work was quite sufficient in extent to give his readers a full 
conception of what he strove to do; during his lifetime he published 
no less than thirty-four volumes — a few of them, to be sure, consisting 
mainly of poems republished from earlier books of his. I do not pretend 
to have read every poem in every volume; but wherever I have looked, 
the general level has seemed to me exceptionally high. He did re- 
markably little poor or even mediocre work. The question is rather as 
to the quality of his very best than as to that of the whole. The mass 
certainly entitles him to a permanent place among the American 
poets; the best must indicate just where that place should be. 

At the time of his death most critics laid particular stress on his 
services as the poet of Kentucky. This was entirely natural, for it 
was distinctly in accordance with his own wish. But now, looking 
back over his work, it seems to me that the best of it has only an 
incidental relation to his native state. Nature poetry which insists 
too strongly on the features of a particular landscape is, after all, 
sharply limited in its appeal. The New England poets suffered often 
from that defect; too frequently they would not let the reader, 
wherever he might be, fill in the pictures from his own experience; 
he must see their pictures or none at all. Contrast this method with 
that of Wordsworth at his best. "Tintern Abbey" and "Peele Castle" 
are just as vivid for those who have never seen the exact spots 
described as for those who have. 

In his earlier work Cawein was apt to let Kentucky come between 
him and the rest of the world. But as he grew older, he learned how 
much greater are the resemblances than the differences. More and 
more he dwelt on human emotions, with nature as the background; 
whereas, in his earlier work, nature had often been the direct inspira- 
tion to the emotions themselves. The transition was from nature — 
Kentucky nature — seeking man, to man seeking nature. Thus there 
was a steady gain in the broadness of his appeal, and consequently 
it is among his later poems that I find most of those on which the per- 
manence of his reputation is likely to rest. 

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Estimates Of His Poetry 

Gifted with a remarkable facility in the handling of verse, Cawein 
had also a keen sense of the values of words. He seldom stumbled ; one 
almost never feels that he would have said anything differently if he 
had known how. Technically he was as well equipped for the writing 
of poetry as any American who has essayed that task in the last 
thirty years. Nor did he suffer from overgrown theories. He wrote, 
evidently, as he thought, using a great variey of forms with absolute 
ease and freedom, and never bending his expression to conform to the 
rules of theorists, or to demonstrate theories of his own. 

I find the key to a good part of the philosophy expressed by his 
poems in a single sentence from a personal letter, which I owe to the 
courtesy of Edward J. O'Brien. "I believe in dryads and fairies," 
Cawein wrote, "but I have never seen one." In all his work one feels 
this consciousness of unfulfilled faith. Not only had he never seen the 
things he believed in, but he knew he never would. There is a touch 
of sadness almost everywhere; not the solemnity that comes in the 
face of strengthening beauty, but the resignation that grows from the 
recognition that the beauty one loves is eternally far away, too 
remote even to be dreamed of. 

The love of beauty was a genuine passion with Cawein, but not 
altogether an inspiring one. His poetry has sometimes suggested to 
me Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" with the great stanza — the next 
to the last one — left out. One always misses the outburst of hope, 
the spirit of "No hungry generations tread thee down." And this, 
it seems to me, is where Cawein's work, even at its best, just fell 
short of true greatness. Everything else he had — felicity of diction, 
fluency of verse, keen sensitiveness to beauty, vivid imagination, the 
power of seizing upon and expressing delicate shades of feeling — but 
he lacked the kind of enthusiasm, the kind of faith, that could alone 
put all these to the highest purpose. 

Lacking this type of greatness, his poetry depends primarily on 
its charm. Concerning this I quote a couple of paragraphs from an 
article by the critic already mentioned, Mr. O'Brien: 

"It is now many years since Edmund Gosse hailed an English 
selection of Mr. Cawein's Kentucky Poems as one of the finest por- 
trayals of landscape that our letters could show. These poems, 
which probably represent Mr. Cawein's best feeling and expression, 
are the fine interpretation of a literary pantheism, which may have 
lacked subtlety, but which never could be said to be insincere in 
mirroring nature in its most shy and elusive moods. The beauty of 
wood life to Mr. Cawein meant a return to the old Greek feeling of 
nature worship, passionately voiced in the wind and in running 
streams. He felt the sympathy of trees, and made the reader feel 
the essential wood magic in all its secrecy, in a life peopled with 
dryads, nymphs and satyrs, cruel and kind alternately as nature is 
cruel and kind, and jealous of human challenge and invasion. 

379 



Madison C aw e i n 

"In all his work, implicit in his earliest volumes as well as in the 
very latest of the fairy plays and poems, the reader was conscious 
of a childish simplicity which forebore to question nature, and, in 
the continuous search for reality in silent places, tended to repudiate, 
perhaps unhappily for his creative vision, the human passions of his 
race and time. He always desired to touch objectively the imagina- 
tive beauties of which he had so real a subjective experience. This 
accounts for the sadness of incomplete achievement which is never 
absent from his best poetry, a kind of spiritual nostalgia which made 
him feel that he was born out of his age in a materialistic environment 
where the old gods might not live and fact continually warred on 
fancy. Mr. Cawein never revealed a creative imagination which 
could pierce satisfactorily through the mists of material substance in 
the essential verities which lay behind them. But his fancy was in- 
comparable and well-nigh inexhaustible in its romantic fecundity. 
In Kentucky he found an individual landscape which he could people 
with his fancy, and in this kind of creation he was assisted by an 
absence of self-conscious environment which is now almost impossible 
of attainment in the populous countryside of the older countries, by 
reason of which the passionate nature poet is so rare in England, 
and our own eastern seaboard today." [From Boston Transcript, 
December 19, 1914: — The Impress Left Upon American Literature by 
the late Madison Cawein, by Edward J. O'Brien, quoted in full on 
pages 155 to 158 of this volume.] 

I have spoken of Madison Cawein as bridging the gap in American 
poetry between the old writers and the new. He did this far more 
completely than his literary contemporary and near neighbor, Riley, 
because he never achieved phenomenal popularity on the strength 
of a single sharply defined type of verse. Riley was not allowed to 
move far in any direction: he had exactly hit the public taste at the 
outset, and he was almost compelled to keep to his own course. 
Cawein, never so successful, was freer to swing with the tide. His 
earlier poetry echoed the older traditions; it was marked as excellent 
by its descriptive vividness and charm, but it was in no sense a blazing 
of new trails. Many of the traditions clung to him to the end, yet 
he was by no means out of sympathy with the new movement; among 
his later poems are a few which might have been the more conserva- 
tive work of some of the radicals — if they had had his ability. 

There was a period when most of the poetry produced in this 
country was conspicuously un-American. Longfellow was dead; the 
poets whose voices are heard today are still going to such schools as 
their genius would brook. For a couple of decades American poetry, 
for the most part, took its inspiration out of books, with the result 
that it had form, but not much else. Through this time of slack 
water Madison Cawein wrote poetry which came, not from the 
writings of others, but from his own life as an American amid American 

380 



Estimates Of His Poetry 

surroundings. A new day has recently dawned — whether altogether 
for good is yet too early to say — and the poets are now American 
if nothing else. But Cawein's work preserved the tradition of gen- 
uineness in our national poetry through a period when it sorely needed 
such a preserver; and it is to be hoped that before long the necessary 
steps will be taken to bring his poems before the public in the proper 
way, that the world may recognize both the full extent of his services 
and the full measure of his excellence. — Henry Adams Bellows. 



381 



XII 

CAWEIN AND SOME OF HIS KENTUCKY FRIENDS 
By Bert Finck 

Louisville, Kentucky 

The following article was read by Mr. Finck before The 
Louisville Literary Club, Cawein Memorial Meeting, December ii, 
1916. He called it, "Madison Cawein and Other Kentucky Writers 
I Have Known." It was published in The Kentucky Magazine, 
August, 191 7, under the title "^Madison Cawein and Kindred Souls." 
Since only those Kentuckians who were personal friends of both 
Mr. Fincic and Mr. Cawein are represented in this article, the title 
is here changed to Cawein and Some of His Kentucky Friends: 

When I think of Madison Cawein I become a part of another 
world; one thought of him lifts me into that other world as if by a 
conjurer's wand, and the dreary scenes of daily existence fade away 
as though they never had been. And still it is the same old world, 
but illuminated by the light of Cawein's soul, which brings to view 
the gold and gems concealed therein. It is the light of his sincerity, 
for it was its rays that brightened and made beautiful all the objects 
with which he came in contact, and which gave a radiant glow to the 
paths he trod. Sincerity was the keynote of Cawein's personality; he 
was incapable of playing an untrue part; he had a holy, religious 
scorn of all pretension and pretenders, and a native horror of insin- 
cerity and hypocrisy. 

First, and above all, he was sincere in his love of the spirit of 
poetry and in his aspiration to lay worthy tributes at her feet. It 
was more than love — it was adoration that he felt, and he was always 
a devotee at this shrine. Devout as he was in his love and worship 
of poetry, Cawein was quick to recognize others who were kneeling 
at his side, and though the tributes of those others might often have 
been crude and humble, he was ever ready to respect and reverence 
them if they were in the least way real. He, himself a towering oak 
in the realms of art, had vision to perceive wild flowers scattered 
about below, and he would at once greet them with encouragement 

382 



Some Kentucky Friends 

and sympathy and smile upon them and speak to them as being 
among his own. This none but the sincere can do. Shallowness is 
afraid to acknowledge any worth in others; shallowness must exert 
all its vision in keeping itself from falling and from being shattered 
to pieces. Cawein, grand, true poet-soul that he was, never knew such 
a fear; he would be still the oak, though he bent down and saluted, 
in a spirit of fellowship, a blade of grass or a violet. He was illumined 
with the glorious truth which made him kind and generous. We 
cannot all be stars or mountains in the world of art, but many of us 
can be hills and brooks that beautify the scene; and, if nothing else, 
we can be vines that adorn a crumbling wall ; and even weeds have 
flowers. In his unselfish love for poetry, Cawein would have been 
happy to have seen every man and woman laying tributes of some 
kind, provided they were true, upon its altar. Charleatanism and 
pretension envy the talents of others; genius always welcomes them, 
as did Cawein. 

His every breath was filled with soul-deep yearning to lay glo- 
rious offerings before the muse, and that was the secret of his weirdly 
wistful smile, which the discerning Kentucky artist, J. Bernhard 
Alberts, so aptly appreciated and understood, and which he so faith- 
fully depicted in his portrait of Cawein, now one of the richest treas- 
ures in the Alberts studio. [The portrait was presented to the Filson 
Club by Mr. Alberts, in 1920.] 

Cawein was sincere in his love of Nature. He reveled in it, 
communed with it in his own language. He was at home with it in its 
every whim and mood. He was familiar with its mysterious secrets, 
and its messages he unfolded to the world. His face would be a 
kaleidoscope of emotions, as he listened to the voices of the brooklet 
and the winds; his frame would tremble with joy as he bent over and 
caressed a wildflower; he had a story to tell of that wildflower's every 
shade of color and of the gossiping leaves that were reciting wonderful 
events. Here was a fairy's slipper which she had dropped in a hurried 
flight; here was a dryad's footstep, and there was the shadow of Pan 
reflected in that pool. As he spoke I believed what he said was true — 
as I do still, and ever shall — for his soul was a companion of Nature's 
soul, and he thus could hear and see as few mortals could. 

Many tributes have been paid to the memory of Cawein, but 
there is one that appeals to me in his connection with his love of 
Nature, for it pictures him as I have often seen and felt him to be. 
It is the poem of another true and sincere poet — one for whom Cawein 
had great admiration, and whose offerings to poetry he rapidly per- 
ceived and welcomed — that of Margaret Steele Anderson. Even 
had she written nothing more than this one great poem, "The Dead 
Poet" — and her volumes of poems are filled throughout with perfect 
gold — the name of Margaret Steele Anderson would have shone 
forever among the stars of classic literature: 

383 



Madison C a w e i n 

The Dead Poet 

In Memory of Madison Cawein. 

Dryads, why weep you in the beeches there? 
Why pluckjthe leafy garlands from your hair? 
What news is this that seems so dark and dread? 
Alas! Alas! lour own true love is dead! 

And you, O naiads, why do you forsake 
The frolic of the fountain and the lake? 
Why sit you on the marge so sad and lorn? 
He played with us who far away is borne! 

O, Thalia, so beautiful and free! 

O, all you Nine of fairest Castaly, 

What sorrow's this that stays your dancing throng? 

Lo, we have lost the comrade of our song: 

Then seek I joy the very gods among! 
Hermes, Apollo, Dionysius young! 
Sweet Aphrodite! Nay, the gods are weeping — 
O, poet, wake! all Hellas mourns your sleeping! 

Margaret Steele Anderson. 

Cawein was sincere in his affections and in his love for his home. 
He and I were most frequently together when he lived in the old house 
at Nineteenth and Market streets, Louisville, with his sister and 
parents, to whom he was devoted. Never did a day pass without his 
stopping, in the midst of his regular visits to the central parts of the 
city, to purchase a gift for his mother or sister — even the old parrot 
was not forgotten, for it must have its cakes and peanuts. He loved 
the very walls of the old house and enriched it with fancies and 
beings of his poetic imagination. I can see him sitting in his favorite 
armchair in his library, looking over his numerous packages of mail 
that he would receive daily; many letters enclosing verses from un- 
known writers craving sympathy and criticism; appeals from obscure 
newspapers and magazines for contributions or financial aid; and he 
would always be genuinely interested in them all, saying: "Here is 
something good — he needs a little encouragement. Yes, I shall help 
that poor devil of an editor." And while he was speaking the old 
black cat would sleepily loll into the room, and Madison would say 
that she was exhausted from her share in the witch's revels of the 
night before; and the parrot, reminding him of her existence by a 
scream, the poet would tell about the coffee party which the bird had 
attended a short while before, where all the parrots met and gossiped 

384 



Some K e ntu c ky F r i e nd s 

about what occurred in their homes. The very pictures and statues 
in the room were brightened with mystical tales, and there were 
mysterious sounds and ghostly whisperings. His home life was 
poetry itself. 

His love for his friends was strong, loyal and enthusiastic, and 
his friends were scattered among all classes of society and in all parts 
of the world. But he was drawn only toward the sincere; in the 
presence of the artificial he shut himself up like a clam. He was 
trustful of his friends and confided in them — kept nothing at all 
from them concealed. He would speak of them constantly and see 
only good in them; their joys and sorrows were his. I can see him 
quivering with indignation over a wrong inflicted upon one who was 
dear to him, and I can hear him uttering all the maledictions con- 
ceivable upon the heads of them that injured his friend. I can see him 
with face of absolute misery because of a misfortune that had be- 
fallen a literary companion and wondering how the sun could shine 
in the midst of his sorrow. For Cawein was sympathy incarnate, 
and therefore, like all true poets, a sufferer. His soul was often in 
tears; he bore not only the agonies of his own cross, but also those of 
others. There was, indeed, no part of Cawein's personality that 
was not sincere; he was sincere in his love for poetry and in his as- 
pirations; sincere in his love for nature, art and the beautiful; sincere 
in his affections; sincere in his dreams and imagination that trans- 
formed the very stones he touched into nuggets of gold. 

As I think of Madison Cawein, there arises before me a group of 
Louisville writers, who are now singing with him in the world of 
eternal song — writers who were his friends and mine; men and women, 
earnest and true, or they would not have been friends of Cawein: 
Will S. Hays, Charles J. O'Malley, Octavia Hensel, Anna Chase 
Deppen, Isaac T. Woodson and William F. Wood. There was Hewett 
Green, brilliant artist and newspaper writer, whose disposition was 
as lovable and attractive as were the products of his brush and pen. 
And Marie Thixton, faithful newspaper writer, who died a martyr to 
her work. Then there was John Duncan, a tireless student, fascinat- 
ing conversationalist, interesting newspaper writer, and human 
encyclopedia. Duncan was an enthusiastic lover of Shakespeare and 
the classics; an authority on botany and a friend of Huxley and of 
Darwin. 

I see Will S. Hays standing at the street corner, hailing each 
passerby, knowing every one by name, uttering bright, witty remarks; 
like Burns, not only in the lyrical sweetness of his verse, but also in 
his love for the humbler classes of mankind. He drew inspiration 
from actual life; his soul was constantly bubbling with sympathy for 
the unhappy and the wronged and with indignation against acts of 
the oppressor. Hays wept with the widow, the orphan, the girl 
betrayed, and he laughed with humanity's simple joys and made the 

385 



Madison C aw e i n 

world sweeter, kinder and mellower by his songs. Like his friend, 
Cawein, he was sincere, and, therefore, simple in his manners, out- 
spoken against hypocrisy, shallowness and fraud. While his name 
will be immortal through his touching heart-songs, his newspaper 
paragraphs will not be easily forgotten — his homely philosophy of 
river incidents and life. 

I can never forget my emotions at an evening concert at one of 
the hotels in Lucerne, Switzerland, many years ago, when, before an 
enthusiastic audience composed of people from all parts of the world, 
an English girl stepped forward and sang "Molly Darling," to the 
enticing accompaniment of an Italian band. But I do not believe 
that all that I or any one else might ever say about Will S. Hays 
could so truly and beautifully picture the worth of his genius as does 
the exquisite sonnet by Dr. Henry A. Cottell: 

The Kentucky Cardinal 
In Memory of Will S. Hays 

As morning blushed and peered with eye of gray, 
Through orchard bough, with Maytime blossoms laden, 
A minstrel red from out the realm of Aiden 
Poured from his heart a welcome to the day. 
He sang his native song and flew away; 
But never a strain of Mozart, Bach or Haydn 
Attuned to voice or pipe or string well played on 
Could thrill the soul like that wild roundelay! 

In morn of life a simple song I heard, 
Sung by an untaught minstrel, blithe and free, 
Which held a magic like that early bird 
That charmed me with its artless melody. 
Like to that bird my minstrel took his flight — 
In Aiden now he hails the morning light. 

Henry A. Cottell. 

In a dark and dismal printer's office in this city I see a Poe-like 
melancholy face and figure, battling, with a poet's soul, against ghosts 
and demons of adversity. Like Poe, whom in appearance he so 
much resembled, Charles J. O'Malley sang all the sweeter as the wolf 
howled at his door; and with his body shivering from the bleak winds 
of poverty and distress, he kept his heart warm with sympathy and 
encouragement for all sincere strugglers in the literary world. Through 
the columns of The Midland Review, which paper afforded him the 
scantiest living he hailed and welcomed every line of verse that he 
believed was true; and many fortune-kissed writers of the South and 
West today must forever bless the pen of Charles J. O'Malley. Whilst 

386 



Some Kentucky Friends 

hanging upon the cross, he burst forth into glorious melody and smiled 
rays of hope into the discouraged hearts of other singers. Like 
Cawein, his friend, and like all true men of genius, he was generous in 
recognizing tributes to the art of others. His sorrow made him not 
sour, but mellow, and all the more faithful to poetry, which like 
Cawein, he adored. 

When I think of the sublime self-sacrificing work of Charles J. 
O'Malley, the tenderly true lines of another genuine Kentucky poet 
occur to me. They are the lyrical thoughts of one who is also 
sincerely devoted to art, and who, too, is as generous as she is gifted, 
and who, by means of her brilliant literary reviews, has done much to 
encourage struggling writers — Anna Logan Hopper: 

Song and Sorrow 

song I made to ease my heart 

So long ago. 
How could such sorrow turn to art. 
I do not know. 

1 can not now recall the pain. 

It is so long; 
I can not bring it back again. 
Even with the song. 

Anna Logan Hopper. 

A brilliant assemblage of musicians, artists and writers, illumi- 
nating a music room in an apartment of this city, appear vividly 
before me now, and I see a salon like that of the famous Madam 
Adam of Paris, and, of earlier days in France, like that of Madam 
DeStael — presided over by one of the most fascinating characters that 
ever graced the environs of Louisville. This hostess was not only 
famous as a critic of music, but also for having been the soul-confidant, 
loyal friend and biographer of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, composer 
of the immortal "Last Hope." Madam Octavia Hensel had been 
for many years instructress to the children of the Archduke Charles 
of Austria and lady-in-waiting at the Austrian court, and while_ in 
Vienna had been the friend and associate of Hans Mackart, the artist, 
Eduard Strauss, the waltz king, and many celebrities in the world of 
music and letters. I can well understand how Eduard Strauss, in an 
interview with a local newspaper reporter, could have made this 
pertinent remark: "Madam Octavia Hensel! What a brilliant 
woman! It is worth a visit to Louisville just to have a conversation 
with her; I knew her in Vienna." 

Hewett Green, Madison Cawein and others were shining members 
of the salon coterie of Madam Hensel. Green declared to me that 

387 



Madison C aw e i n 

Octavia Hensel was undoubtedly the most fascinating woman that 
he had ever come in contact with, and he had met many fascinating 
personalities while living in Paris and other cities abroad. 

Once more I hear that generous flow of DeStael-Hke wit and of 
information and knowledge born of deepest study and experience; 
again I see those wonderful, luminous eyes that seemed to be pene- 
trating one's very soul and discovering the most concealed secrets 
there; that would distinguish at once the true from the false and readily 
perceive pure gold ; eyes which even the shrewdest would not attempt 
to deceive, the flashes of which cast spells almost hypnotic. But as 
she speaks and smiles and paints enchanting word pictures of scenes 
along the way of her marvelous and romantic career, I see the form of 
Louis Moreau Gottschalk standing beside her, unfolding the depth 
of his soul to her; and I see her inspiring him with her sympathy into 
the sweetest notes ever heard by this world. Gottschalk — delicate, 
melancholy, sensitive — understood by her alone. And I think of 
Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata," the divisions of which she compares 
to his life, in her rhapsodic biography of him which is truly a poem in 
prose, like Gottschalk's music, tropical, glorious with rich color, a 
rare memorial to a rare and beautiful soul. 

In the midst of the bright firelight of her entrancing conversation 
a vision arises of her kneeling in devout worship before the altars of 
music and art, and taking the oath of self-sacrifice and fidelity unto 
death. And I see her, in that vision, living but for the one purpose 
— misunderstood, as all the faithful are misunderstood by the world 
— playing a part, perhaps, at times, in order to be true and to attain 
her lofty, unselfish ends — to bring other worshippers to the altars 
which she so loved. So, with the memory of Gottschalk, like a guiding 
star, always before her, Octavia Hensel spoke, taught and wrote music 
and art almost to the last hours of her long, inspiring life. I shall 
always remember her most forcibly as Cawein and I found her one 
day, kissing her pen, and saying: "This is all that I have to live for — 
my pen, my pen, my pen; without my pen, life is nothing, nothing." 

A fairy-like form and personality comes tripping before me now, 
the very presence of her casts dream-spells of ethereal regions and 
of flowers, music and angels, and of all that is sweet and dainty in 
the world of song. This poet is Annie Chase Deppen, whose lyrical 
words sounded like the tinkling of fairy bells. Her exquisite fancies 
brightened the pages of many a Southern and Eastern magazine, and 
they could have gracefully danced or sighed with the waves of music. 
But no song that she ever poured forth could be more melodious than 
was the melody of her own entrancing nature, which charmed all who 
ever knew her and made them love her. Her voice, said Cawein, was 
itself music and her face a poem. 

There are those whose lightest presence warms and cheers our 
natures; there are those whose far-off footsteps chill our bones. 

388 



Some K e n tu c ky F r i e n d s 

To the former class belonged two poets who were friends to each 
other, as well as to Madison Cawein — Isaac T. Woodson and William 
F. Wood. 

There was always about Mr. Woodson a lofty air of peace — such 
peace as glorifies a mountain height. He seemed to be ever soaring 
above the agitation of the world, as though inspired with an illumined 
realization of the littleness of all in life but what was genuine — that 
alone which can never die. No matter what troubled spirit might 
be possessing me, as soon as I drew near to Isaac Woodson its mastery 
at once subsided ; for, as he looked at me with that wonderfully calm 
and restful expression, it seemed as though the pure light of the 
heavens were falling upon me, which always tells me not to fear or 
worry, for all is well — all is well — "God's in His Heaven — all's right 
with the world." He had a way of lifting up his hands when saluting 
passersby, as though he were conferring a benediction. In my heart 
I always believed that was what he was instinctively doing — for the 
very breath of his soul was love and charity for all mankind and its 
continuous message, — "And on earth peace, good will toward men." 
His verse was rich with the blue sky tints of his personality, and cast 
the same sweet spell of lofty rest as he himself. 

Incarnation of gentle profundity, poet and philosopher at once, 
the hand-grasp of William F. Wood was sympathy itself — sympathy, 
born of poetic wisdom, that cannot help but share the joys and 
sorrows of others, whether it will or no, for it pierces through all the 
curtains of life and feels what is going on behind the scenes, and thus 
cannot condemn, but only pity. Of a nature deeply venerative and 
religious, entirely free from all worldly design, William F. Wood gave 
utterance to the meditations of his pure, devoted soul, and the shrine 
of poetry never had more sincere or unselfish offerings than his. 
One of his poems appealed particularly to his friend, Cawein, as it 
also does to me: 

If Love Should Die 

If love should die, and we remain 

But quickened dust; 
What would the great round world contain 

In which to trust? 

If Christ should pass, his life grow dim, 

Would you still pray, 
His glory, all gone out with Him, 

On earth to stay? 

I know not what the world may think, 

But I would then 
Rather oblivious waters drink 
Than live with men, 

William F. Wood. 
389 



Madison Cawein 

In the world of art there is no such thing as division between the 
visible and invisible. Madison Cawein and his interesting group of 
literary friends, who are no longer With us in material form, are 
associated as tenderly as ever with the circle of writers who were 
Cawein's friends, and who are still shining, as they struggle along on 
this plane below, some of whom it is my kindly fortune to know, 
such as Dr. Henry A. Cottell, Anna Blanche McGill, Mrs. Elvira 
Sydnor Miller Slaughter, Charles Hamilton Musgrove, Henry Coolidge 
Semple, Leigh Gordon Giltner, Mrs. Alicia K. VanBuren, Otto A. 
Rothert, Margaret Steele Anderson, Edwin Carlisle Litsey, Ingram 
Crockett, Lucien V. Rule and Will H. Field. Another is Mrs. Evelyn 
Snead Barnett, the novelist and literary critic, who is as brilliant as 
she is magnanimous and always sincere in her devotion to art. Then 
there is Cale Young Rice, who, since the death of America's great 
nature poet, ranks as the State's most noted of the living poets. 

John Wilson Townsend wrote the first true and satisfactory 
biographical sketch of his friend Madison Cawein, and is now at 
work on a life of the poet. [Mr. Townsend was then, 1916, seriously 
considering the writing of a book on Mr. Cawein.] Thanks to Mr. 
Townsend, and also to Mr. Rothert, Kentucky literature will forever 
shine on the pages of history, and the shades of many neglected 
Kentucky writers arise from their tombs of oblivion and call them 
blessed. 

To me the very utterance of the name of Dr. Henry A. Cottell 
conjures forth all that is beautiful and idealistic in loyal, poetic 
friendship; all that is glowingly sincere in love and worship of art, he 
paying his tribute to poetry in the form of sonnets, which in artistic 
perfection are surpassed by none of our day. A published volume of 
his sonnets would make a priceless addition to the wealth of American 
literature and bring joy to the hearts of all true lovers of the classics; 
especially would his sonnet, "De Profundis," in memory of Madison 
Cawein, which is a masterpiece glittering with jewels: 



De Profundis 
In Memory of Madison Cawein 

Out of the deep the stricken Psalmist cried, 

When his vexed heart was like the troubled sea; 

Thus did he sound the soul's profundity 

And take reprisal of its mighty tide. 

O thou whose bark life's restless waves did ride 

And found no friendly port to welcome thee. 

Thou hadst reprisal of Infinity 

In sorrow's saddest, deepest strains — and died. 

390 



Some K e n t u c ky F r i e n d s 

Job cursed the day that marked his wretched birth ; 

Thy natal day did mark thee with a curse. 

The patriarch found peace at length on earth, 

Whilst thou, who hadst small guerdon here, and worse. 

The martyr's pang of unrequited worth, 

Hast won the poet's crown, immortal verse. 

Henry A. Cottell. 

Even as Dr. Johnson had his Boswell to interpret his genius to 
the world, so has Madison Cawein his Dr. Cottell, who, not only 
during the lifetime of his devoted and illustrious poet friend, but as 
faithfully after his death, has acted as a zealous missionary in making 
known and creating interest in his poetry far and wide. Many who 
were indifferent to the works of Cawein became, through the exposi- 
tion of Dr. Cottell, their most enthusiastic admirers. Like all 
geniuses and the truly great. Dr. Cottell is as generous and modest 
as he is gifted, and spreads the light of his brilliant intellect not 
realizing the blessing he is conferring. I hear, when I think of him, 
the delightful splashing of a ceaselessly flowing fountain, the waters 
of which sparkle with inspiring information and knowledge of art. 

The name of Anna Blanche McGill, like that of Dr. Cottell, 
invokes visions of all that is loyal and golden in friendship and art. 
Cawein never spoke of her except in terms of enthusiasm and ad- 
miration, not only as one whose friendship is highly valued, but as one 
who understood, as few others could, the real undercurrent meanings 
of his poetry. He had the most profound appreciation of her Minerva- 
like opinions of verse and prose, and he would quote her criticisms 
with the same tender fervor that he would passages from favorite 
authors. He welcomed every published line of her pen, and was 
always the first to speak of it and praise it to others. Again and 
again I have met him on the street with an armful of newspapers and 
magazines, and his words of greeting would be to open the pages of 
one of the magazines, and, with glowing eyes, point exultingly to an 
article or poem of Anna Blanche McGill. 

Friendship in any form at all is beautiful — one of the most 
beautiful things in this world; it is particularly so when it exists 
between poets; but when it exists, not only between their personali- 
ties, but also between the spirits of their pens, it wears celestial colors. 
Such was the friendship between Madison Cawein and Dr. Cottell, and 
between Madison Cawein and Anna Blanche McGill; and together 
they knelt, as they still do kneel, before the altars of poetry and art. 

It seems to me that the soul of every true poet is reflected in at 
least one of his poems — his muse, as it were, making a nestling place 
there. The muse of Anna Blanche McGill has chosen for that pur- 
pose "The Eternal Builder," published in The Bellman a year or two 
ago. It is a tribute to eternal beauty. . . . 

391 



Madison C a w e i n 

The Eternal Builder 

Once on such an eve as this, 

Once in just such golden air, 
Tyre and Troy and Babylon 

Soared triumphantly and fair. 

Tyre so fallen, Troy turned ashes, 

Babylon superb no more — 
Splendors, dead, alas, the sundowns 

Burnished wondrously of yore. 

Ah, but still Immortal Beauty 

Seeks new cities to illume — 
Lo, on yonder roofs and casements, 

How her gold flame-roses bloom. . . . 

Fashioned of her dreams eternal. 

Who knows what fair towns arise. 
Lifting now immortal columns 

'Neath what other evening skies. 

Nay, on such a golden evening 

More than fanciful desire 
Seems it that earth's mortal builders 

Deathless beauty may inspire: 

May some day so take their spirits. 

Hands and brain may so enthrall, 
As some perfect grace infuses 

Column, spandril, arch and wall. 

Till on such a golden evening, 

None shall sigh to look upon 
Fair new cities and remember 

Tyre and Troy and Babylon. 

Anna Blanche McGill. 

Elvira Sydnor Miller Slaughter. She sings every mood of the 
human heart and warbles sweet strains of charity for the foibles of 
mankind. No matter whether her writings be in verse or prose, 
they always are melodious, for her pen but gives expression to the 
voice of her nature, which is one bubbling stream of poetry. Like 
Will S. Hays, who was her friend, inspiration comes to her from life 
itself, and there is no sorrow, joy or weakness of humanity with which 
she is not familiar; and her deep, broad, sympathetic knowledge of 

392 



Some K e ntu cky F r i e nd s 

the world makes us laugh, dream, weep, just as she will by powers 
magical, in her Songs of the Heart, a book of poems; The Tiger s 
Daughter and Other Stories, delightful fairy tales, and Confessions of 
a Tattler, as well as in her numerous contributions to newspapers and 
magazines, many of which are treasured in family records and scrap- 
books as being among the precious trinkets of the home. 

Charles Hamilton Musgrove, or, rather, "Mus," as he is familiarly 
and fondly called by his many friends of all classes and conditions of 
society (and I can conceive of no newspaper man or poet more be- 
loved than he is by not only the members of his own profession, but 
by everyone that knows him) was another loyal and congenial friend 
and companion of Madison Cawein, who was always outspoken in 
recognition and praise of his genius, and compared his muse to that 
of Edgar Allen Poe. Cawein was delighted with Musgrove's per- 
sonality, which was that of a thorough Bohemian in all the charming 
meaning of that word; for Cawein loved Bohemianism and Bohe- 
mians — they were always nearest and dearest to his heart. It was, 
in fact, through Cawein that I met Musgrove. Cawein had an un- 
selfish pleasure in introducing to each other people that he liked or was 
interested in, and his words of introduction paved an easy way for 
further acquaintance and friendship. Musgrove was at that time a 
reporter for a daily newspaper; he is now writing the editorial para- 
graphs of the Louisville Times. 

My first impression of him was, as it still is and ever will be, that 
he was the incarnation of wild, uncontrollable genius itself, which, 
even as the bird, it knows not why, must sing. That is, in fact, the 
height of genius — when one cannot help but give expression to the 
language of his soul, not knowing why or wherefore, and without a 
purpose of his own; sublime helplessness under the power of a muse 
or inspiration, call it what you like. Such is the poetic genius of 
Musgrove, whose volumes of verse. Pan and Mollis (dedicated to 
Madison Cawein), and The Dream Beautiful, and Other Poems, are 
filled with the grand sacred sorrow of unrest, with which every nature 
that looks above worldly things for peace is filled; such glorious 
natures as created a "Faust," "Ode to a Skylark" and "Paradise Lost," 
emitting pure breaths of yearning for life higher and afar, even as they 
pour forth the soul-deep tragedies of life; and such is the poetry of 
Musgrove. It will give him immortality, whether he cares for it or 
not, and even though he never writes another line. 

Henry Coolidge Semple and Will H. Field — now Judge Field — 
started out in life as newspaper writers and poets, but have apparently 
thrown their pens away; only apparently, for I feel that such true 
and genuine poetic natures as theirs will some day be overcome by 
the wooing of the muses they deserted, and that Will H. Field, like 
Walter Malone, of Tennessee — who was loved and admired both as 
judge and poet, but whose verse gave him widespread fame — will yet 

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Madison C aw e i n 

be best remembered for his exquisite lyrics, which Madison Cawein so 
much admired and so loudly praised. [Walter M alone dedicated one 
of his books — Songs of the North and South, 1900 — to Madison Ca- 
wein.] 

Henry Coolidge Semple, when I first knew him, was the editor 
of a little struggling newspaper with which Musgrove and I were also 
associated. Its small scantily furnished office was located in a central 
place of the city — a place of rendezvous for all Bohemian spirits. 
I never heard of any rent being paid for the office. We made ourselves 
busy — the only time we ever did make ourselves busy — in locking and 
barricading the door of the room and in keeping ominously silent when 
we suspected a visit from the rent collector; and we kept our shivering 
bodies from freezing by borrowing kindling and coal — which loan was 
never settled — from the Salvation Army, which at that time, had 
headquarters in the building. If any revenue did ever come into the 
office it was too little to be divided and was quickly transformed into 
a beverage to preserve the life of our Bohemian spirits. 

Madison Cawein was a frequent and delighted visitor to our 
little Bohemian office, which savored so much, he said, of the Latin 
Quarter of Paris. He heartily enjoyed the wild, unrestrained flow of 
the spirits of the personalities that congregated there, some of whom 
were not only ragged in purse and clothes, but, I must confess, some- 
what in morals as well. Cawein did not hesitate to contribute an 
occasional poem to the paper, and several of Musgrove's and Semple's 
appeared in its columns, too. Cawein compared Semple's Western 
dialect verse to that of Eugene Field, and was particularly pleased 
with "Doc," dedicated to Dr. Harris Kelly, of this city, and "Hank," 
both published in the book of verse entitled Hank, and Other Poems. 

Otto A. Rothert, the historian, whose History of Muhlenberg 
County Cawein declared is "as fascinating as fiction," and which re- 
ceived unsparing praise from the most fastidious critics in this country, 
was, as he is still, a most loyal and enthusiastic friend of our poet and 
his poetry. Mr. Rothert is the only person who owns a complete 
autographed collection of Cawein's published works. He also has a 
large and unique collection of autographed books of a number of 
other Kentucky authors, many of whom are his warmest friends. 

The last prolonged visit to Kentucky scenes of nature was made 
by Cawein to Muhlenberg County, a few weeks before his death, as 
the guest of Mr. Rothert and in company with Young E. Allison, the 
author of "The Derelict," a poem which Cawein considered one of the 
best ever written by an American. Cawein's face was illumined with 
enthusiasm as he related to me an account of his trip which he said 
was one of the most delightful he had ever taken in his life, and he 
informed me that it was his intention to try to write an epic, the 
scenes of which would lie in Kentucky, and some of them in Muhlen- 
berg County. 

394 



Some K e n tu c k y F r i e n d s 

Mr. Rothert possesses the rare gift of making history romantic; 
he can make the dullest subjects interesting and brilliant with color. 
He is an indefatigable digger among the mines of the past, never 
failing to find and share with the reading world priceless gems and 
minerals hitherto unknown and undiscovered. He is at present 
zealously engaged on an early history of the Cave-in-Rock outlaws 
and the fiatboatmen of the Ohio, every line of which I am sure will be 
true and also thrilling. 

The prose of Leigh Gordon Giltner is as vigorous and graphic as 
that of Kipling. She is one of the most successful of short story 
writers of the day, but I prefer to think of her as the author of the 
tender, sympathetic and lyrical volume of poems. The Path of Dreams, 
which will give her the more lasting fame. 

As Thought is Led, and Fireflies, of Alicia K. Van Buren, make me 
dream of the plaintive songs and melodies of Schubert and Schumann. 
The last visit I made to Cawein's apartment at St. James Court, in 
the autumn of the year in which he died, was on the occasion of a 
reception given to a few of his literary friends, in honor of Mrs. Van 
Buren. Cawein and Dr. Cottell read from Fireflies, then just published. 
Mrs. Cawein, beautiful and gifted, read in her inimitable way passages 
from Irish plays; and there was an expression of pleasure and happi- 
ness on the face of Cawein that evening that I can never forget. 

Lucien V. Rule is a philosopher, minister of the gospel, humani- 
tarian and poet. I always look upon him as missionary, expressing 
his messages to the world in verse. He is like unto the prophets of 
old, voicing, in inspired, melodious language, visions of the light. 
He is a leader among men; Socialist, in the true sense of the term, 
denouncing wrong and singing of the kingdom of eternal love — love 
which, one day, alone must reign. His nature is as pure and beautiful 
as is the tone of his verse, and as lofty, clear, ethereal and soaring. 

Edwin Carlisle Litsey, like Leigh Gordon Giltner, has achieved 
an enviable success as a writer of stories. He will be best and longest 
remembered, however, by his lately published volume of strong, 
genuine, melodious, heart-touching poems. Spindrift. 

And then there is another of Cawein's friends, Ingram Crockett 
— a poet, whether he writes in verse or prose — poet of nature and of 
the human heart, whom sorrow has enriched with the glorious starlight 
of life's night, which inspires his muse to sing all the sweeter; for Art 
is the daughter of Soul and Sorrow, and to reach heights we must 
first have touched depths. 

And so I think of them always — of Madison Cawein and these 
faithful Kentucky friends of his — kneeling together at the feet of 
Poetry and Art; some in the midst of sunlight, some in the midst of 
shadows; some in one world, some in another; some offering tributes 
more brilliant than others, but all of pure gold — the only gold that 
is of value in all the realms of eternity — the priceless gold of sincerity. 

395 



XIII 

REMINISCENCES OF CAWEIN 
By Eleven of His Associates 

Written in 1920 

Madison Cawein II, Anna Blanche McGill, 

Reuben Post Halleck, Leigh Gordon Giltner, 

Elvira S. Miller Slaughter, Henry A. Cottell, 
Young E. Allison, Henry Van dyke, 

Charles Hamilton Musgrove, George Lee Burton, 
Henry H. Koehler. 



By Madison Cawein II 

Louisville, Kentucky 

When my father died I was ten years old; I am now sixteen. 
Many of my recollections of him are vague, others are somewhat 
clear. I shall attempt to re-tell some of those that impressed me most. 
The characteristic that stands out foremost in my recollections of 
my father is that he was always gentle and kind-hearted toward me 
and my mother, and toward all others, young and old, with whom he 
came in contact. 

My grandmother tells me that in my infancy when I was turned 
over to my father to be rocked to sleep he took me in his arms and 
read aloud poems from a magazine or book. He would half read and 
half sing them in such a way that they had the effect of a cradle 
song. My bed time was 7:30, but I do not recall how old I was when 
that hour was first set, nor when it was discontinued. I do recall, 
however, that nearly every night my father told me stories or read fairy 
tales to me until I was sent to bed. He did this, I think, with the 
intention of developing my imagination. 

396 



Reminiscences 

I feel that some of my early recollections of my father are con- 
fused with those of my mother and grandmother, Mrs. Anna M. 
McKelvey. It may be well to add that Mrs. McKelvey is my mother's 
step-mother. She is about eight years older than my mother. She 
and my mother were more like sisters or chums than mother and 
daughter. From my birth down to the time of my mother's death 
I was looked after by my grandmother about as much as I was by my 
mother. I now live with grandmother McKelvey and she is in a 
sense a mother to me. No real mother could be more loving and 
devoted to a son than grandmother McKelvey. 

When I was about three years of age my parents made their 
first visit to Mr. and Mrs. Eric Pape in Massachusetts. I went with 
them. The Papes then lived at Annisquam, but later moved to Man- 
chester-by-the-Sea. I remember during one of our later visits strolling 
through the woods and along the coast, how interested father was in 
an old mill, some old huts and the old forest trees and how he enjoyed 
his trips in Mr. Pape's yacht. Moritz Pape, a boy about my age, 
frequently accompanied us on these walks and rides. The dilapidated 
old mill in the neighborhood was one of our favorite stopping places. 
My father often told us ghost stories about the place and said if we 
would come down any dark night and look through the cracks of 
the floor and listen we would find the white miller at work and hear 
the machinery. I have a distinct recollection of the early morning 
walks we took with the Papes, and the berries we gathered and the 
apples we picked along the wayside. Father always plucked a few 
flowers and never failed to give me one with a remark to the effect 
that it grew in a garden cared for by the fairies. 

He and I often went to Jacob Park and Kenwood Hill — two of 
his favorite haunts. I have sat with him there in the shade of a tree 
and heard him relate stories about his boyhood or tell me fanciful 
tales about some of the places then within our sight. One day we 
were sitting on the brink of a small valley in which there were a 
number of gullies and other barren places that appeared to be forma- 
tions of baked clay. The small hills in the vicinity showed naked 
spots of the same character. I do not recall the location of the place, 
but the stories he told regarding it interested me greatly. He said it 
was an extinct volcano and that an Indian village once stood there 
and had been destroyed by an eruption. He gave me a glowing 
account of a great battle some Indians had fought and how the 
medicine men applied roots and herbs to the wounded, and how 
while the warriors were preparing for another battle an eruption 
destroyed the village and exterminated the two tribes. 

He loved to walk through old graveyards and other so-called 
haunted places and tell me stories about them. I have a vague recol- 
lection of visiting one small old graveyard a number of times. I think 
it is on Kenwood Hill. The graves were sunken, the crude stones 

397 



Madison C a w e i n 

dilapidated and the entire place covered with more or less brush. 
He wandered around in it as though looking for a certain headstone, 
and in the meantime told me the story of the dead man's life and how 
his ghost came back and haunted the places in which he had done 
good or bad deeds while alive. All these stories made a great im- 
pression upon me. I would think of the Indian battles and the haunted 
places for many days, ask questions and discuss some of the details 
with him. I, of course, did not suspect that these tales were made up 
for my amusement. 

Often he sat on the grass and wrote in his note book while I 
played around under a nearby tree or in a brook. He knew every 
bird, bee and flower and pointed out many of them and told me their 
names. No matter how occupied he was he seemed aware of the 
presence of certain birds. "Where is that red bird?" he would ask; 
and it pleased him very much to watch me looking for it, and if I 
succeeded in locating it he was delighted. 

The stories I remember best pertain to the time when my father 
was a boy living in Oldham County, Kentucky, near the Babbits, 
and in Indiana on the Knobs near New Albany. 

When my father was about nine years old grandfather Cawein 
had charge of a hotel known as Rock Springs, a resort in Oldham 
County. Not far from the hotel were Babbit's Mill and the Babbit 
home. The mill was an old water mill and was seldom operated. 
My father said that he and some of the other boys tried to outdo 
each other in the telling of ghost stories. One afternoon they decided 
to go down to the mill that very night and see for themselves whether 
or not there really were such things as ghosts. They asked Mr. 
Babbit to go with them, and he said he would. They later called 
for him to accompany them, but he could not be found and so the 
boys went to the mill alone. When they arrived at the old mill they 
began to doubt the safety of entering it. They felt that talking 
during the day about going into the old place was quite a different 
matter from actually going into it at night. 

After some delay and daring they summoned enough courage 
to walk in. They found their way through the various rooms and 
looked around as best they could in the dark. Soon a vague sound 
reached their ears; this rapidly changed to a louder moan and a 
clanking of chains. They made their way through the dark toward 
the entrance as quickly as possible. When they emerged from the 
last room they looked through the fallen-in-floor into the old water 
wheel room below. The noise became more distinct, and suddenly 
they saw beneath them something white moving to and fro. It came 
toward them. They grabbed chunks of wood lying around and threw 
them in self defense at the white object. A succession of startled cries 
came from the white thing and soon the boys discovered that it was 
calling for them to stop their attacks. "Hey, there," cried the voice 

398 



Reminiscences 

from below, "Stop it, boys, I'm no ghost; I'm Mr. Babbit; I was 
just fooling you." This frightened the boys more than ever. They 
rushed from the mill, over a field, and up a hill, and not until they 
got home did they realize that Mr. Babbit was the "ghost" and that 
he had gone to the mill prepared, knowing they intended to search 
the place for ghosts. 

Tradition had it, so my father said, that a whole family had been 
murdered in the house near New Albany into which grandfather 
Cawein moved when my father was a boy of about ten years and that 
the victims had been buried under an apple tree standing in the 
corner of the orchard. One night my grandmother not being able to 
sleep, and stirred by an irresistible impulse, went to the window and 
looked out, and what did she see but two ghosts dancing under the 
corner tree in the orchard. She called for grandfather, but before 
he or any of the others reached the window, the ghosts were gone. 

On another night, under similar circumstances, my grandmother 
rose and looking out of the window saw a white horse, with a long 
white mane and tail, dashing over the hills in the distance. In the 
same neighborhood there lived a farmer who owned a number of fine 
horses. One day shortly after my grandmother had seen the white 
horse, this man stopped at grandfather's front gate, got off his horse 
and transacted the business for which he had come. When he was 
ready to leave he found that his horse would not move. The beast 
stood trembling, with its eyes fixed on the corner tree in the orchard. 
They tried to coax the animal to pass the tree, for it stood near the 
road he intended to take; but all efforts failed. It was only by leading 
the horse in the opposite direction that the man succeeded in getting 
him away. Although he tried he was never again able to ride this 
horse near the house or the orchard. 

About this time my father and his brothers and some of their 
boy friends became very much interested in treasure seeking. They 
searched the old haunted houses in their neighborhood without 
success. One day they decided to explore their own cellar. They 
took a pick and shovel and a candle and descended into the un- 
explored region. The cellar had not been used for a number of years. 
Immediately after all had landed at the bottom of the steps, the 
candle went out. This frightened the boys, and when from out the 
darkness they saw two great, green eyes staring at them, a panic 
ensued and all made a rush for the steps. My father was the last in 
line and realizing there was nothing between him and the shining 
eyes, he was almost too frightened to move. He managed to run up 
the steps, and after he got out they slammed the cellar door and 
bolted it, and never again did any of them try to find hidden treas- 
ures in an abandoned cellar. 

My father told me many stories. He had interesting ones for 
all occasions — Hallowe'en, Christmas, Easter, etc. — and for nearly 

399 



Madison C aw e i n 

every kind of bird, butterfly, flower and tree; for the sun, moon and 
stars and for all kinds of weather. I distinctly remember that he read 
some of his poems to me when I was very small, and now going over 
his The Giant and the Star I vaguely identify some of these child 
poems as the ones he read to me before they were published. 

As years roll on, my recollections of my trips to the parks with 
my father, my life at home when he and my mother were alive, and 
even the stories he told me may fade from my memory, but I am 
confident that my recollection of my father's love for me and my love 
for him will remain vivid until the end. 



By Reuben Post Halleck 

Louisville, Kentucky 

I came to the Louisville Male High School to teach in September, 
1883, and I had the good fortune to be closely associated with Madison 
J. Cawein for three years of his school life. I remember almost as 
distinctly as if it were yesterday the delight which Cawein took in 
studying Hale's Longer English Poems under me in the school year 
of 1883-84. He was then a sophomore in the Louisville Male High 
School. The entire class was of excellent caliber, but he stood 
easily first in his appreciation of poetry. 

When we came to Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner," Cawein's 
delight was almost unbounded in that romantic poem. The mystery 
of the sea, of the "fog-smoke white," of the "ice mast high" that 
came "floating by," of the "moving moon" that "went up the sky and 
nowhere did abide;" the beauty of the creatures of the sea, "blue, 
glossy green, and velvet black;" the coming of the tropic night when: 

"The sun's rim dips; the stars rush out: 
At one stride comes the dark;" 

the realization of how beautiful God had made his creatures — 

"O happy Hving things, no tongue 
Their beauty might declare" — 

until Cawein could say with the Mariner: 

"A spring of love gushed from my heart, 
And I blessed them unaware!" — 

all these enchanted young Cawein and made him resolve to become 
a poet. He then showed me lines of his own which reflected the 

400 



Reminiscences 

beauty of the "Ancient Mariner." It was a delight for me to see his 
poetic soul bud and blossom so rapidly under the spring showers 
of the master poets. 

The single poem in Hale's which then afifected him most pro- 
foundly was "The Eve of St. Agnes," by John Keats. Cawein 
turned teacher and called to my attention the poetic beauty of such 
expressions as "azure-lidded sleep," "the tiger moth's deep-damasked 
wings," "blanched linen smooth and lavendered," "the music yearning 
like a god in pain," "the silver snarling trumpets" which " 'gan to 
chide." 

I asked Cawein to come to see me out of school hours and read 
to me the passages from "The Eve of St. Agnes" that pleased him most. 
He read fully half the poem. I remember that he read the first 
stanza slowly three times and said that he wished he were an artist 
so that he could put that stanza on canvas. The romantic legend 
of the poem charmed him. When Madeline, its heroine, retired in 
the castle on the Eve of St. Agnes, confident that Porphyro, the 
hero, would be hers if she saw his face in a dream on that prophetic 
night — Cawein was enchanted as he read me the story. The tremolo 
came to his voice when he read the lines telling how Porphyro, after 
gaining admission to the castle, was bending over the sleeping Made- 
line at the instant that he appeared in her dream. Then in ecstasy 
Cawein read of her awakening: 

"Ethereal, flushed, and like a throbbing star 
Seen 'mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose; 
Into her dream he melted, as the rose 
Blendeth its odor with the violet . 
Solution sweet." 

It has been easy for me to trace the influence of Keats in general 
and of this poem in particular in much of Cawein's poetry. Keats 
was a great artist in the use of poetic words and one of Cawein's 
temperament could have had no better master. Poets are known by 
their adjectives and verbs. Such adjectives as "scarlet-haunted" 
in the lines: 

Beyond the light that would not die 
Out of the scarlet-haunted sky. 

show that Cawein was an apt pupil of Keats. 

Cawein was the first and only member of a graduating class in my 
more than a quarter of a century association with the Louisville Male 
High School to have an original poem for his commencement address. 
It was my duty to select and train the speakers. I remember how 
well he acquitted himself on that June night in 1886 when he made 
his first public appearance as a poet before a Louisville audience. 

401 



Madison C a w e i n 

After his school days were finished I often tramped with Cawein 
over Iroquois Park and the adjacent forests and hills south of Louis- 
ville. The nature of this region appears again and again in his verse. 
A path about three-eighths of a mile long on the southeastern side of 
Iroquois Park hill is known as the Cawein Walk. Lovers of his 
poetry ought to petition the Board of Park Commissioners to have 
the sign "Cawein Walk" posted at the northern and southern en- 
trance of this Walk. He wrote some of his best spring poetry sitting 
on the secluded stone steps in the middle part of this Walk, which 
looks toward Kenwood Hill and the more distant heights southeast 
of Louisville. The Cawein Trail is a different haunt of his. This 
is a trail through the dense beech forest southwest of Iroquois Park. 
While he was sitting on a log spanning a brook in this forest, he heard 
the "stealthy twilight's tread," and then the "far off, far off woe of 
whippoorwill, of whippoorwill." This experience suggested one of 
his best poems, "The Whippoorwill." I have often walked over this 
trail with Cawein and I know that its associations thrilled him and 
reappeared in his poetry. 

Cawein revealed to prosaic mortals the magic in the common 
things of nature, the "clover-sweetened slope," the "wild-wood limbs," 
the "stealthy twilight's tread." Good poetry has in it the essence of 
immortality. Cawein will be remembered long after those of us who 
write prose are forgotten. 



By Elvira S. Miller Slaughter 
Louisville, Kentucky 

As I sit by the river this late afternoon, where the delicate 
scent of the sweet fern is blown about me, I am thinking of the dear 
companion who once sat with me here; that friend for whom, through- 
out the long years of our friendship, I never had to offer an apology 
nor a defense. He was to me as Horatio was to Hamlet, and I feel 
that I "shall never look upon his like again." 

I had corresponded with Madison Cawein for about a year 
before meeting him personally, but from the beginning I felt as if I 
had known him all my life. When I first made his acquaintance he 
lived in the big brick house at Nineteenth and Market streets. There 
was a large yard on the eastern side of the residence. It was always 
gay with old-fashioned flowers, many of which he has woven into his 
songs. His home was a comfortable one, and he was devoted to it. 

At this time, the Cawein household was composed of Dr. and 
Mrs. William Cawein, parents of the poet, his brothers, Charles, 
John and Will, his sister Lilian and his cousins. Rose and Fred 
Cawein. Will and Fred were gifted artists. On the occasions of my 

402 



Reminiscences 

visits to the Cawein home, Madison would come for me and escort me 
there. On some of the afternoons we would drink to his success, 
sipping a golden-hued wine which his father had made from grapes 
grown on their little farm near Jefferson town. 

We used to have a lot of fun teasing the young poet about his 
habit of waylaying the postman every day in order to be able to 
secure his rejected manuscripts unknown to the members of the 
household, and thereby avoid their banter. They found him out, 
however, and he took their jests at his expense with great good 
humor, knowing that they were hoping he would gain, sooner or later, 
a wide recognition. 

Some of the Cawein family were believers in Spiritualism. Madi- 
son regarded his mother as a wonderfully gifted medium. Every- 
thing savoring of the weird, the uncanny and the supernatural ap- 
pealed to the poet, but he professed his interest only to his intimate 
friends. 

He loved to frequent old grass-grown cemeteries, especially the 
one located at Seventeenth and Jefferson streets, where, in those 
days, the vaults were approached by steps leading to their entrances. 
We often went to this romantic old city of the dead and walked 
among the tombs, or descended into the vaults, where the time-worn 
caskets of all sizes were ranged upon shelves. He would muse on the 
histories of the dead, on their loves and hates; and, like the French 
poet, would exclaim sadly, "Where are the snows of yesteryear?" 
His poem "Gloramone" was inspired by visits to this place, and was 
written shortly after he had read "La Morte Amoureuse," of Gautier. 
This cemetery is described in many of his poems. He found inspira- 
tion there which he could not find in Cave Hill, where, he declared, the 
beauty was too artificial and formal for his taste. 

I do not recall in all the years I knew him, that Mr. Cawein 
expressed a belief in any creed. He was one of the purest and most 
reverent men I ever knew. He was a Pantheist at heart and loved 
beauty even as Keats and Shelley loved it; and, in his fancy he saw 
radiant forms and faces in the woods and fields; all the lost gods of 
old returned to welcome him and be with him along the forest ways. 

I never knew a more prodigious reader than Mr. Cawein. He 
took delight in Flaubert, Gautier, Zola, DeMaupassant and Rousseau; 
but, strange to relate, he rarely read the French poets, or shared in 
the least my fondness for Beronger or DeMusset. 

Tennyson was his idol for a time, and it was then that Mr. Cawein 
wrote "Accolon of Gaul" (1888) which, he once told me, touched 
upon his own youth. Later on he became infatuated with Browning, 
and this enthusiastic admiration made him an unconscious imitator 
of the English genius whose poem, "The Laboratory," Mr. Cawein 
revived (about 1890) in his own dramatic effort, "His First Mistress." 
Another literary work which charmed him was the unrevised edition 

403 



Madison C aw e i n 

of "Arabian Nights." He did not seem to care for practical works, for 
history, nor for the average novel. I do not believe he ever took any 
real pleasure in reading the prose stories of his warm friend, William 
Dean Howells. He delighted, however, in the genius of his friends, 
James Lane Allen, John Fox, Junior, Robert Burns Wilson, Charles J. 
O'Malley, Ingram Crockett, Cale Young Rice, Leigh Gordon Giltner, 
Lucien V. Rule, Robert E. Lee Gibson, Walter Malone, Bert Finck, 
Anna Blanche McGill, Young E. Allison, James Whitcomb Riley and 
others in the Middle West who belonged to his singers of the Table 
Round. They were his friends through life and their friendship with 
him was as beautiful as it was enduring. 

Mr. Cawein made many good friends and lost none of them. 
He loved women; they inspired him as flowers and music charmed his 
soul. Among his best friends were women; however, not one of them, 
in my opinion, ever felt for him any other affection save the brooding, 
protecting tenderness given by a mother or sister. There was some- 
thing of the child about him always; yet while we all felt he would do 
finer work when he had grown older and had been tried by suffering 
and loss, we could not bear the thought of the necessity of any 
shadows falling on his heart, or financial worries thronging about 
his door. 

He was ever loyal. He had no petty jealousies of others, but 
delighted in their successes. If Mr. Cawein ever spoke unfavorably of 
another's poem, his criticism was devoid of envy or malice. I recall 
when I was on the stafif of the Louisville Evening Times, he requested 
me to give a generous write-up on Cale Young Rice, whose book 
Song Surf was shortly to appear. He highly praised Mr. Rice and 
his work. So it was with other writers; he made special efforts to 
have their poetry praised by the press if he thought it worthy. 

At this early stage of our acquaintance, Mr. Cawein was a clerk 
in the Newmarket, a pool room operated by the late Anderson M. 
Waddill and Joe T. Burt. Mr. Burt was a great admirer of the poet, 
and although no judge of literature and not much of a reader, he, 
nevertheless, read many of Mr. Cawein 's poems and seemed par- 
ticularly fond of "To A Wind-Flower." He always spoke of Madison 
as "Mad," abbreviating his name in that fashion. When Mr. Cawein 
married, Mr. Burt gave him a handsome wedding gift. Mr. Cawein 
disliked the pool room; it was a handicap to him socially also. On 
more than one occasion when I asked permission of some appreciative 
persons to introduce him, and added that the poet worked in the 
Newmarket, they threw up their hands in horror and exclaimed: 
"Oh, how awful! Urge your gifted friend to leave that place and 
then you may bring him to call on us." It was his salary at the 
Newmarket, however, that enabled him to bring out his first books. 
Mr. Cawein was never one of those who kick away the ladder by 
which they climb. 

404 



Reminiscences 

In the early years of our friendship we used to set aside Sunday 
evenings for our meetings, and frequently on Sunday afternoons we 
roamed through the West End and down to where the Ohio flows 
placidly by the blue Knobs on the Indiana shore. Here were the 
quiet fields and the banks fragrant with sweet fern; and here we 
often saw gorgeous sunsets. When we had the time we would drive 
out to their little farm near Jeffersontown, or up the Brownsboro 
Road, or over on the Knobs near New Albany to many of the places 
he pictured in his poems. 

He knew each flower and tree by name, and knew their habits 
and their time of blossoming; whereas to me the flowers along the 
wayside were like pretty girls I knew by sight but not by name. 
We returned from our drives or rambles laden with spoils of the 
woodlands; in the fall with sumach, goldenrod and ironweed, and 
in the springtime with wild plum blossoms, snowy dogwood and 
ruddy blooms of the Judas tree. 

Mr. Cawein believed in himself. He was most appreciative of 
kindness and encouragement, but would never permit any one to 
patronize him or take him up as a fad. When Kentucky Poems, 
the first English edition of his work, appeared he was childishly 
enthusiastic over the fact that the people of his native city, who 
had given him the scant meed of praise usually given a home poet, 
were asking him where they could get a copy of his published-in- 
England book. He smilingly told them they would have to send to 
London or wait until the Louisville book stores had secured a supply. 
He wrote me a long letter, joyous and proud, and concluded it by 
saying that the copy he was sending me was then the only one in the 
city; in fact, it was his own, the one forwarded from London by Mr. 
Gosse. 

Our respective domestic afflictions and various other changes 
caused us to see each other less and less frequently as time rolled 
on. My mother passed away. She had always admired Mr. Cawein, 
and when she died he wrote me a letter in which he said he was 
surprised to learn that she was older than he had thought. But my 
mother was one of those who keep Spring in their hearts; it was this 
sympathy with youth that made her seem as one with persons like 
Mr. Cawein. 

I was married in May, 1903, and Mr. Cawein in June. Dating 
from about that time we saw comparatively little of each other, 
but I never lost my interest in his literary career. When we met on 
the street we would pause for a chat. One afternoon about a year 
before he died we met by chance near Beechmont, and he invited 
me to join him in a walk to Iroquois Park. It was a beautiful day in 
the early fall and the trees and flowers had begun to take on their 
autumn colors. It was a jaunt into Arcady, and for both of us a return 
to the long ago. The cares and broken dreams of life were forgotten 

405 



Madison Cawein 

as we strolled to the Park and climbed the upland path where the 
wind was singing among the trees and the leaves falling at our feet. 
From the summit of Iroquois Park we looked on the quiet fields and 
woodlands and on the roofs and spires of the distant city. We saw 
the Ohio winding by the western shores where we had so often roamed 
together; and a silence more eloquent than speech was ours. We 
lingered on the hill until the last red ray of the sun had died behind 
the trees and the downward path was filled with gray shadows. 
I feel that this, my last walk with the friend who had shared much of 
the sunshine of the past with me, was as a benediction on our friend- 
ship. 

By Young E. Allison 
Louisville, Kentucky 

Summing up a familiar, friendly acquaintance — it could scarcely 
be called an intimate friendship — that continued for twenty-five 
years with Cawein, the personal quality in him that most impressed 
me was the perfect clarity of a childlike nature. He had some hard 
experiences of life, he had met and dealt with human nature in the 
rough and had plenty of cynical knowledge of the world, but he went 
through even the mire of it unspotted. After he left school he had to 
deal for some years with machine-like fact to earn his living, but his 
mind was ever fixed upon dreams and that contemplation of beauty 
which makes children alike to poets and poets alike to children. 

Cawein's personal honesty and mental integrity were both 
perfect. Nobody has accused him of filching a single phrase or even 
of cunning adaptation. He could not pretend. All that he attained of 
fame was deserved and was an unconcealed delight to him as it un- 
rolled. During the last three years of his life, when fortune deserted 
him, when he was hard put to it to maintain his family and himself — 
when he recognized that fame after all was just a bay wreath that 
kept nothing warm of itself — a great depression came upon him and 
he made no attempt to conceal it from his familiars. But he did not 
whine over fate. He turned manfully to fight. He thought of journal- 
ism, for which he was peculiarly unfitted; he tried writing scenarios 
for moving pictures, and failed; courageously he took stock of his 
talents and tried his hand tentatively at the cynical and flippant 
themes already growing popular in verse — and tore them up. 

"It is the irony of fate," he said once to me when discussing his 
plight, "that I, who am known all over America and England, and 
have spent my life learning one of the highest and most prized of 
arts, cannot make a living at it." He said it with an amused smile. 
His plight did not daunt him for himself. It was his wife and child 
he had ever in his mind. For himself he had the makings of a splendid 

406 



Reminiscences 

vagabond who could have endured hardship with a light heart and 
counted it adventure. There was suffering in the thought of the 
others and in the realization that his poetry was an exotic upon which 
life could not be supported. Then there was deep sensitive pride un- 
derneath, such as all men feel but seek to deny exhibition of. He just 
suffered. 

He never posed. When he was praised he was heartily happy. 
Delight shone in his eyes and in a frank smile, so radiant that it was 
almost laughter. Under unfavorable criticism which he felt to be 
sincere he would be depressed, because he had none of the over- 
weening egotism of genius, but rather an honest confidence in himself 
which was yet ready to doubt whether he had succeeded merely 
because he had nobly tried. Insincere and superficial criticism angered 
him for the moment as it would a child, but he soon recovered and 
could laugh at it. 

All his life he was a child of wonder who thrilled to see his dreams 
come true. The recognition of his high poetic quality by William 
Dean Howells and the publication of Edmund Gosse's collection 
of his poems in England were the two keenest thrills of his life. Both 
times he went to the woods to indulge his first exuberance before 
meeting his everyday friends. He told me so. He explained that he was 
afraid he might say foolish things unless he "cooled ofT." I was 
absent when the Howells appreciation appeared, but when the Gosse 
letter came he told me of it quickly. 

"Think of it!" he said, with his radiant, boyish smile, "I'm to 
be published by the greatest living English critic. It is something 
I never even dreamed of, but oh. Lord! how I've worked for such a 
thing!" 

By the way, the Cawein pronunciation of English was not 
wholly undefiled. He said, "Oh, Lard," when he meant "Oh Lord," 
and a corpse was ever a "carpse" to him. But he possessed a wonder- 
ful vocabulary and in polite conversation a nice sense of choosing the 
good word. And he would make daring use of a poet's right of ellipsis 
in describing things. 

As are most men who are concentrated upon a single great pur- 
pose in life, Cawein was serious minded with a slant to melancholy; 
but he was good-humored, patient, generously tolerant. These 
qualities enabled him to get along well, if modestly, in society. He 
was never the poet there — nobody was ever called upon to burn 
candles before him. He had no "small talk," but was a good listener 
and enjoyed though he had little of the wit that passes current in 
conversation. 

His "sense of humor" as distinguished from good humor was a 
lagging quality. Several months before he died he came into my 
ofifice one day and laid before me the photographic facsimile of some 
printed verses of mine with my name signed to them. 

407 



Madison C a w e i n 

"Did you sign this? ' ' he asked. 

"No," I said, "that's not my signature. It's a forgery," 

"Well," he explained, with a little sign of disconcertion, "I signed 
your name myself and I hope I haven't caused you any annoyance." 

It seems that several years before he had come to get a printed 
copy of the verses autographed for a friend at a distance. Finding that 
I was out of town, and the call for the autograph urgent, he had 
concluded to gratify his friend with "something just as good," and 
recalling my signature as well as he could he wrote it and sent the 
print back. 

"I intended to tell you of it," he continued, "but I forgot, and 
now my friend has had it photographed and is sending copies to 
his friends." He seemed genuinely disturbed. I told him it was all 
right and that I would stand for it and make all the necessary affida- 
vits. Then the joke of it began to amuse him. He gave me the fac- 
simile, we labeled it "The Great Cawein Forgery" and there it is in 
my archives. 

Cawein and James Whitcomb Riley were great admirers of each 
other. They were alike in that both were architects of their own 
poetic structures, unaided by the scholarship of schools. They were 
both melodists, both went straight to nature for inspiration and both 
succeeded. Riley's popular success was far greater because the nature 
he illuminated was human nature direct, while Cawein turned to 
Flora and thus illuminated human nature by indirection. Before he 
died Riley's success had made him rich and the pressure by publishers 
to commercialize that success permanently converted him into a sort 
of "institution" of which he was the central figure of Buddha, moved 
and served by the priests of the press. Cawein 's poetry was in essence 
poetry for poets, Riley's for the people. Riley had a great cynical 
adventurous spirit and yet wrote the most artless poems. Cawein 
had a most artless spirit and wrote poems of great cynical knowledge. 
Nevertheless the very inner core of both was ingrained boyishness 
which is the soul of poetic genius. 

Somewhere back in the early nineties they made acquaintance 
by exchange of books. Soon afterward Riley came down from Indiana- 
polis to pay me a visit and try the manuscript of his Rhymes of Child- 
hood upon my young son. Cawein was invited out and we spent two 
days loafing together. The two poets met with a little constraint 
based upon deep mutual respect and admiration each of the other's 
work. Riley was nearly twenty years the elder, with a great reputa- 
tion and a reigning success on the platform. Cawein was quite re- 
spectful with something like awe of him. We went out in the crisp 
autumn afternoon and climbed up Iroquois Park to the table top and 
strolled in the woods. It happened that Riley and I had both, as boys, 
been emergency substitute snare drummers ("by ear") in the local 



408 



Reminiscences 

brass bands of our respective towns, and, when we met, were ac- 
customed to recall the old band pieces and our adventures. Marches, 
quicksteps, polkas, we knew scores together. 

So, that afternoon, walking through the deafening frou-frou of 
the dead leaves, Riley turned to me and rapped out, "No. i6" and 
then making the sound of a drum long-roll with his tongue he swung 
into whistling a lively quickstep. I whistled a second to his air and 
the rustle of the leaves made a striking accompaniment. Cawein 
observed it all with astonishment as if he couldn't credit the sight 
of a distinguished poet parading like a ten-year old boy, twiddling 
his fingers as if he were playing a cornet and marching proudly with 
head up and chest out. I don't think Cawein had much of the music 
of sound in him, in spite of his great sense of melody in words and 
rhythms, but he enjoyed the musical enjoyment of others. We sat 
down on a log and recalled old airs and songs, whistling or singing 
"Silver Lake," "The White Cockade," "Lillibulero," "Corn Rigs 
and Barley Rigs," "Bonnie Doon" — all that old time treasury of 
tunes and tears. And Cawein listened and wondered and evidently 
doubted if he were awake, and then smiled his slow appreciative 
smile. When he finally became convinced that there was another boy 
there in Riley he soon thawed into complete recognition, but he never 
was lacking in respect. 

I carried on a correspondence, now regular, now desultory, 
with Riley for thirty years and scarcely ever after that day did he 
write without sending a line or a paragraph of cheer or of admiration 
to Cawein. They met whenever Riley came. Riley, who was apparent- 
ly never disturbed in a single heartbeat by the presence of women, 
had a great admiration for Mrs. Cawein's full, dark beauty and 
invariably said when asking me about the Caweins, "Well, he's luckier 
as a man than any poet has a right to expect to be." Once he said to 
me, "It doesn't do a poet any good to live in the presence of beauty 
like Mad. Cawein has got in his wife. A poet has just got to make his 
own beauty by the sweat of his poetry. If it is there before him all 
the time he is in danger of forgetting how to work it out a new way 
every day." 

Everybody who knew Cawein at all must have known how wholly 
devoid he was of jealousy or envy. He was always delighted with the 
success of others and went out of his way to encourage them. He hailed 
the appearance of every new poet of promise as if there could not 
possibly be too many of them. The nearest I ever heard him come to 
any expression of artistic selfishness was in his comments upon a short 
poem written by one of his friends who was a mere dilletante in 
literature. The song in question had come into great popularity with 
critics and readers. 

"Here I have been writing poetry all my life," said Cawein, 
"and have published twenty books, but I haven't written a single 

409 



Madison C aw e i n 

poem that is remembered or that can be called popular. Here this 
writer comes along with a few stray pieces and hits the mark with a 
song that will be remembered after all I have written is forgotten. 
But, dog-gone it! it deserves to live — I'll say that!" 

And he took it upon himself to get the song included in two 
anthologies of verse to help it live. 

We met most frequently at the magazine and newspaper counter 
in Bearing's old Fourth Street book store, just north of Jefferson. 
He kept a sharp eye on the poetry in current magazines and news- 
papers with a literary "corner." He was there nearly every day in the 
week — always on Sunday mornings. Between lo and 12 o'clock, 
Sundays, you could count upon meeting there quite a circle of ap- 
preciative readers who dropped in to smell over books and magazines 
and to take home a roll of the latter to snatch relief from the dull after- 
noons and the long Sunday nights — judges, lawyers, physicians, 
engineers, railroad magnates and the like. All knew him and they 
would dicuss what to read. He was buried in poetry, but he would get 
his head out now and then to read novels, autobiography, memoir 
and history, though he confessed to me he found history pretty dull 
stuff except in the hands of the Abbotts or Froudes or Macaulays. 
"I read it," he said, "to keep from being entirely ignorant of the 
subject." His judgment on novels seemed to me quite unscientific. 
You could never discover any particular taste he had for them. The 
melodiousness of Stevenson and Thackeray appealed to the poetic 
in him, but all stories seemed alike to him. We spent many a pleasant 
hour there Sunday wrangling over print and expressing scorn for 
each other's judgment. 

We almost never discussed his own poetry. I had told him from 
the first that I had made no study of poetry and did not presume to 
criticise it. It was to me only a series of pictures with splendid color 
lines, giving in the end the same impressions that came of the finest 
prose. The niceties and fittingnesses of form were quite beyond me as 
was the binding of a book the contents of which stirred me. He thought 
it a curiously careless way to view poetry. "Form, melody, rhynie 
and length," he said, "are the very essence of the poet's labor, and it 
takes a hell of a lot of hard work to get them moving together. After 
it is done men like you just glance over it, sneak out the honey and 
leave the artist's hard work unnoticed." 

When I told him that I thought in his Intimations of the Beautiful 
he had come nearer than any other poet to setting the evanishing 
things that make up the trembling atmosphere of poetic beauty before 
the eyes of readers, he was glad with a fine humility that was beautiful 
to see. When I told him his passionate dream in "The Salamander" 
was as fine in melody and color as Poe's "Raven," but was marred to 
weakness, as "The Raven" was, by too many stanzas of mere words 
that diluted the splendid idea, he was dashed and sighed and said, 

410 



Reminiscences 

"Well, sometimes we don't know where to stop and just keep on like 
a poker-player trying to win out. Then, we hate to destroy what has 
cost so much thought." This song he afterward spoiled in revision. 

It will be understood, of course, that Cawein was a hard worker. 
He loved the work, too, and while he had respect for the product of 
his pen he took a practical view and wrote for the market and as well 
tried to create his own market. "You have to sell poetry as you 
would potatoes," he remarked once in matter-of-fact tone. 

Several years before he died he met a composer who proposed 
that a libretto be made of Cawein's picturesque but cruel drama, 
"Cabestaing," for which he would write the music. Cawein was much 
pleased and very willing, but frankly admitted that he had had no 
experience of stage preparation and came to propose to me collabo- 
ration with them. I had little or no experience but agreed to go over 
the drama and see what could be done with it for actual stage repre- 
sentation. It would lend itself to opera, but the final castastrophe is 
too horrid to be represented as it is too raw, I think, even for poetic 
treatment under the canons of modern taste. So I told him the last 
act would have to be entirely re-written with the nature of the tragedy 
softened. "Very well," he said, "we will do it." 

Now the faculty of the poet is Imagination comprehensive. It 
consists in equal parts of fancy and invention and the more a poet has 
of both factors of his faculty the greater he is. I thought Cawein was 
weak in invention, though he rioted in fancy. So I tested him out by 
asking what he proposed in order to bring the story to a more beautiful 
but still strong close. He took it under consideration but did not make 
a suggestion. He was helpless to get away from the historical fact that 
would have horrified an audience with cannibalism, though it was 
easy to substitute a poetic ending. But it came out in the course of 
the consideration that he was perfectly willing to re-write his drama, 
sacrifice to stage exigencies, and conform to every practical require- 
ment, even to surrendering words dear to his poetic soul in order to 
introduce others more "singable." He had no more foolish egotism 
than Shakespeare, who consented to have his fine passages slaughtered 
and his comedy "gagged" by his own comedians. 

It turned out, however, that the composer could not "compose" 
and so nothing came of it. But for several weeks Cawein had high 
hopes. 

If Cawein had any religious belief expressible in any other way 
than in wonder and reverence for all in nature that unrolled before 
him in life, I never discovered it. He admired the poetry of religion, 
its symbolism, the beauty of its ritual and ceremonials and associa- 
tions, just as he did the poetry in everything else, but the dogmatic 
facts did not appeal to him at all. It has been said that he believed in 
spiritism and communication with the dead, but I am sure he did not. 
One hot summer evening in 1914 we went to take dinner with Otto A. 

411 



Madison C aw e i n 

Rothert at the great hospitable home on East Gray Street. After 
dinner, with the sun just set and a comfortable "cool" creeping up 
from the ground, we took our chairs out on the south portico looking 
out over the greenswarded shrub garden in the rear, lighted up cigars 
and talked of the spiritistic and occult. It went so far that Mr. 
Rothert's niece, a charming girl of sixteen, who had presided at the 
meal, soon announced that it was "too spooky" for her and fled from 
the listening to the lights in the house. 

All the results of very wide reading, of some personal investi- 
gation and experience, were thrown into the conversation and all 
three of us agreed that there was someting in coincidence and a 
great mass of apparently undeniable fact in all the occult claims for 
which we had no explanation, but which brought no conviction to us. 
I remember quite well the agreement upon the illustration that these 
things ought not to be to the untrained adult intelligence any more 
conclusive proof of the supernatural than the impossible feats of 
the sleight-of-hand performers were to the untrained senses of a 
child. That would certainly seem proof that Cawein was no convinced 
believer in life after death in its sense of spiritual identity. He 
seemed to me rather to cherish the idea as sublime poetry representing 
the dreams and yearnings of men. And he clung to it as he would to 
any poetic vision of his own. He beleived in it as he did in ghosts 
and fairies, as fancies not as facts. He was ardent in the conversation, 
and if he were concealing his belief it was the only time in our long 
acquaintance that he ever failed in perfect frankness and sincerity. 
After his death Mr. Rothert and I recalled the incident and its signi- 
ficance. Cawein used all the traditions, symbols, similes and folk 
lore of all beliefs that lured the faith of people, to light up his poetry. 
He wrote creepily of ghosts but himself laughed at them. In his 
poetry he was illumining human nature by its own high lights. 

Probably no poet ever looked less one than Cawein. He was 
not insignificant looking, because his appearance was saved by two 
features of strength. One, the large hazel eyes, calm and kindly in 
repose, which lighted up with every expression in conversation. 
They were wonderful eyes in which potential fires burned deep. 
The other was the protuberance of the skull over the eyes which the 
phrenologists say indicates the powers of perception. They battle- 
mented his forehead and his beetling eyebrows united to give his 
face at times a heavy troubled appearance, in which there was some 
obstinacy, but always strength. The bronze bust of him is a very 
poor portrait, to my thinking. 



412 



Reminiscences 

By Charles Hamilton Musgrove 

Louisville, Kentucky 

One sunny morning in June, 1892, a young man, slightly under- 
size and inclined to be a trifle sallow, climbed the steps of the 
George G. Fetter Printing Company, then located at 241 Fifth Street, 
Louisville, and made his way to the ofifice. This portion of the none- 
too-pretentious job printing plant was divided into two sections by a 
railing about three feet in height. The enclosed portion, which looked 
over Fifth Street from the second floor, was the working area, while 
the outside space, about twenty by thirty feet, was what Mr. George 
Griffith Fetter, president of the company, was pleased to call the 
"lounging lobby of Louisville's literati." The alliteration pleased 
Mr. Fetter's guests, who assembled there almost daily, and, in turn, 
Mr. Fetter was "glad that they were glad." 

Several of the "literati" were present when the newcomer strode 
in, mopping his brow and revealing the already-sparse suit of light 
brown hair which crowned his head. Mr. Fetter hailed him with a 
cheery smile and an extended hand, at the same time saying as for the 
benefit of someone who was not visibly present, yet somewhere within 
the sound of his voice: "Everything's all right now, Howard. 'Old 
Mat's here and his pockets are bulging with poems. You can call the 
roll, and don't overlook the new member, Old Mus, just from the 
green fields of Meade County, Kentucky." 

Mr. Fetter's remarks were addressed to Howard Wedekemper, 
secretary of the printing company, who was writing at a high desk 
which was screened from the view of the "literati." The allusion 
to "Old Mat" heralded the arrival of Madison Cawein, aged twenty- 
seven, somewhat freckled, a bit bald and, as I have said before, a 
trifle sallow. "Old Mus," to whom he had referred at the close of 
his observations, was myself. I was, as the genial print shop pro- 
prietor put it, fresh from the verdant hills of Meade County, tall, 
dark, spare, mop-headed and wistful-eyed; age, not quite twenty-one; 
calling, country school teacher; ambition, to be a poet. 

After a brief exchange of greetings among the "literati," Mr. 
Fetter said, addressing Cawein: "Mat, this is Old Mus — Charles 
Hamilton Musgrove. He thinks he's a poet because he's written a 
poem called 'The Lonely Loon.' I don't know whether he's a poet or 
not. Shober says he isn't, but William Stone Sterrett swears he is. 
Maybe you can find out. He looks sad enough to be a poet, but then 
there's Humphries who looks sad, too, and God knows he's no poet." 

This was my introduction to Madison Cawein. The three people 
referred to by Mr. Fetter were of the "literati." Charles Ernest 
Shober was about to become associated with Mr. Fetter in the pub- 
lication of Fetter's Southern Magazine; Sterrett was editor and pub- 

413 



Madison C aw e i n 

lisher of The Girl, a Sunday newspaper of shrewish character, printed 
on pink paper and wearing on her shoulder a chip for all the world; 
William Humphries was "a literary man from Mississippi," and 
entertained hopes of getting on the editorial staff of the new magazine. 
I was what Sterrett called the "paid poet" of The Girl, because I 
drew a few dollars a week for writing a poem, a "sermon," a couple of 
gossipy paragraphs, soliciting subscriptions and advertisements, doing 
the collecting and issuing the papers to the newsboys on Sunday 
morning. 

I was quite familiar with Madison Cawein's work. I had read 
the six books of poems which he had issued to that date, and most 
of his verses which had appeared in the magazines and newspapers. 
I had also read some glowing reviews of his books, and it was with 
a feeling of profound reverence that I acknowledged Mr. Fetter's 
bizarre introduction. 

"I'll bet twenty to one," Mr. Fetter continued, "that Mat's got 
a poem in his pocket. He'd better have one, for the cuts are made and 
the printers are waiting to take a whack at it. How about it, Mat?" 

Cawein said that he had the poem, that he'd spent most of 
the previous night in getting it into shape, and admitted that he 
thought quite well of it in the polished state. It was "The Moon- 
shiner," a lyric describing a tragedy of the Cumberland mountains. 

"Old Mus has just turned in one called 'The Cannibals,' " con- 
tinued Mr. Fetter, "It's a sonnet about some fellows that got cast 
away at sea on a raft and ate one another up — that is, down to the 
last man, and he jumped overboard. Mus has beat Mat on horrors, 
but he hasn't written as good a poem." Both contributions appeared 
in Fetter's Southern Magazine. ["The Moonshiner," illustrated by 
Frederick W. Cawein, appeared in Volume i. Number i, August, 1892, 
and "The Cannibals" in November, 1892. Mr. Musgrove's poem in 
the first issue is "To A Skull."] 

Cawein and I fell to talking about books and poets, and of what 
we thought of Robert Burns Wilson, John Fox, Jr., James Lane Allen 
and other Kentuckians whose literary stars then were climbing toward 
the zenith. I was exuberant in my praise of Cawein's last book. Moods 
and Memories, and told him very impulsively that he was certain to 
become a great poet. He smilingly thanked me, and asked me to 
recite some of my poems, which I did; and he pronounced them 
promising, whereupon I was thrown into a fervor of ecstasy. 

Beginning with that June day in 1892 our friendship ripened 
through almost daily intercourse. We met in Fetter's "lounging 
lobby," and I would steal an hour or so from my many duties on 
The Girl to walk around with him to his first publishers, John P. 
Morton & Company. In those days he called there daily for his mail, 
and was as regular of schedule as an express train. Every morning, 
practically on the stroke of eleven o'clock, he appeared before the 

414 



Reminiscences 

little window in the wire screen which fenced in the ofifice force and 
voiced his cheery greetings. Reviews of Moods and Memories were 
coming in, and some were not very kind. A few critics for certain 
newspapers seemed to resent the frequency with which Cawein issued 
volumes from the press, and began making unfavorable comparisons 
between his earlier and later work. But Cawein never grew ruffled, or, 
if he did, he did not show it. Whether praised or berated, he smiled 
serenely and went on his way. 

The poet's habit of work was also bound to an inflexible schedule. 
The Caweins then breakfasted early — possibly, if my memory serves 
me right, as early as seven o'clock. Immediately after breakfast 
Madison would retire to his study, which was located on the second 
floor of the family residence at Nineteenth and Market streets, and, 
after giving strict orders that he was not to be disturbed, he began the 
routine work of his brief day. I say brief, because whatever Cawein 
may have set down in his note books or evolved from his imagination, 
or learned from contact with men and women, his actual hours of 
labor at his desk with pen, ink and ruled foolscap paper, were just 
about three a day. When the clock in his study told the hour of ten, 
he put away his writing material and started on his daily walk up 
town. I used to wonder how he turned off the tap of inspiration and 
found the stream still ready to flow when he sought it on the following 
day. I remember that I remarked once that he must hold the muses in 
some sort of mysterious leash, but he only gave me a smile for an 
answer. 

When he left his study a few minutes past ten o'clock, he walked 
up Market Street to Fifth Street, stopped at the office of Fetter's 
Southern Magazine while this short lived publication was in existence, 
and then, as already said, went to the office of John P. Morton & 
Company. The distance was fourteen blocks, and he made it on foot 
each way, except Sunday, every day of the year. He said that it was 
beneficial to his health, and doubtless it was, as the remainder of the 
day was spent quietly in reading. 

One thing to which the poet seldom referred was his employment, 
in his early manhood, in the Newmarket pool room. His brother, 
John D. Cawein, was the cashier and also one of the managers of 
this betting establishment, and it was there that Madison found the 
first and only employment he ever knew outside of his literary labors. 
Madison was assistant cashier and also had charge of what was known 
in the parlance of horsemen in those days as the "combination book." 
This work required a wide and accurate knowledge of the records of 
race horses, their breeding, past performances, achievements on the 
tracks of various sorts, carrying powers, and other details of the 
racing game which was necessary to the forming of an estimate of a 
race horse's possible chances against certain other contenders, equally 
analysed, sifted and charted. In this position Cawein spent about 

415 



Madison Cawein 

six years of his life, and when, in 1892, he quit the place, he had put 
by enough salary to render him more or less independent. One year 
later, however, when a financial panic swept the country and closed 
five banks in Louisville, he suddenly found his savings in the vaults 
of a bank which had suspended payment. He accepted the situation 
like a true philosopher and uttered no complaint. It was only a few 
years before his death that he had the satisfaction of withdrawing 
the last dollar that was tied up by the panic of 1893. 

Within a little more than a year after its debut. Fetter's Southern 
Magazine gave up the ghost. [The last number of Fetter's Southern 
Magazitie appeared in October, 1893. Fetter's was succeeded by 
The Southern Magazine which ran from November, 1893, to March, 
1895. Mr. Cawein and Mr. Musgrove contributed to both maga- 
zines.] It had made a gallant struggle against heavy odds, and in 
passing it gave a dignified wave of the hand to conditions which, so 
far, have made a magazine of the South an impossibility. With it 
went many hopes and not a few dollars, to say nothing of the "loung- 
ing lobby of Louisville's literati." Sterrett's Sunday paper. The 
Girl, preceded the magazine in retiring from the field of activity, and 
my office of "paid poet" became vacant.. Charles Ernest Shober and 
William Humphries vanished and were heard of no more. Mr. 
Fetter swept away the debris and worked harder than ever. He 
forgot his ambition to be a magazine publisher and, under the changed 
conditions, the "literati" sought a new rendezvous. 

It happened that about this time Brent Altsheler, a brother of 
the late novelist, Joseph Altsheler, then on the staff of The New York 
World, began the publication of a newspaper called The Sunday Star. 
Mr. Altsheler and Mr. Cawein were close friends. I had a small 
position on The Sunday Star and the poet made almost daily excur- 
sions to the office of this paper. The business manager of the publi- 
cation was an energetic young man named Benjamin Lippold, and he 
and Cawein became good friends. 

In 1896 Lippold left the employment of Mr. Altsheler and began 
the publication of Lippold' s Illustrated News. In that year I enrolled 
as a student in the law department of the University of Louisville, 
and, as I had some time on my hands which hung more or less heavily, 
I undertook to help out Mr. Lippold in the editorial conduct of his 
weekly. The office of this publication became the meeting place of a 
dozen or more congenial spirits, and here, too, came Cawein to mingle 
with the nondescript crowd and to get a whiff of Bohemian atmosphere 
as it existed in Louisville at that period. 

While on the staff of The' Sunday Star I had conducted a depart- 
ment called "Echoes from Bohemia," and to this column Cawein was 
a frequent contributor. When I went with Lippold' s Illustrated News, 
I continued my department under the same head, and Cawein also 
gave freely of the products of his muse. 

416 



Reminiscences 

One incident of this period is worth recording. It was a cold 
bleak December day — a day which seemed eminently fit to furnish 
the last expiring rigor to Lippold's paper which then was bled white — 
when the poet, a half dozen frequenters of the office, and myself set 
about to organize the Bohemian Club. The choice of Master of 
Ceremonies fell upon Walter Matthews, a rich tobacco man and an 
old friend of Madison who, at an earlier period of his life, 
had had ambitions to become a Shakespearian actor. Matthews 
averred that the proper inspiration necessary to the organization of 
the club could not be conjured up without the stimulus of champagne. 
The office of the paper was on the second floor above a saloon and it 
needed but a few bank notes and a nimble negro waiter to supply the 
sparkling beverage. Other orders followed during the organization, 
and huge trays of edibles from a neighboring restaurant came in as 
side issues. Matthews paid the bills, and, in turn, was elected presi- 
dent of the club. Cawein was chosen "poet laureate," and made a 
speech. Lippold, not being apprised of the contemplated formation 
of the club — it was impromptu, in fact — was not present. There was 
not a lump of coal in the room, and while the club members were 
drinking champagne and eating rich viands, the fire went out! The 
incongruity of the situation appealed so strongly to Matthews' sense 
of humor that he bought five more quarts of wine, and very sternly 
rebuked a member who proposed to purchase a bucket of coal from a 
passing wagon. The meeting adjourned in the twilight. The grate 
was stone cold, but the room was littered with champagne bottles, 
lobster shells and "butts" of expensive cigars. Cawein wrote an 
elaborate poem on the occasion, and read it at the next meeting. 
It was full of the spirit and the atmosphere of the occasion, and a copy 
of it was long preserved by each member of the Bohemian Club. 

Incidentally (this was known to very few members of the or- 
ganization) Cawein, on the day following the birth of the club, timidly 
approached Lippold and offered to buy a load of coal for the sanctum. 
Lippold waved him aside, saying that several coal dealers were 
advertising in his paper and that he would make them "come across" 
with some fuel. He added that he was in no sense an object of 
charity, which, of course, was quite true. 

In those days I had the pleasure of making frequent excursions 
with Cawein into the picturesque woods and hills which lie north of 
New Albany, Indiana. The poet had spent a part of his boyhood in 
this romantic environment, and its spell was forever upon him. 
Some of his most beautiful poems were born of the recollections of 
Silver Hills and other parts of the Knobs and he often said to me that 
no landscapes which he had ever seen appealed to him so strongly 
as did these. It was from these environs that he drew much of the 
magic lore which made his verse so poignantly in sympathy with 
nature's every mood, and his fancy so pregnant with the color and 

417 



Madison C aw e i n 

fragrance that found lasting incarnation in the wondrous imagery 
which graces his pages. He knew all the wild flowers by name, and 
every bird note was a comrade's call. Sky and earth were his picture 
books and all the varied activities of nature, from the thunderstorm 
to the birth of a dewdrop, were notes of a marvelous symphony to 
which his soul was perfectly attuned. 

Then, as during the years that followed, modesty was Cawein's 
dominant characteristic, moderation his habit of life. He was not a 
moralist, but his morals were good. He seldom drank, except on 
occasions where a libation was a rigid part of the program. True to 
his Teutonic ancestry, he preferred beer to all other beverages. Now 
and then he smoked a cigar, but he was in no sense an addict to the 
weed. He never talked of himself or his work except to his most 
intimate friends. Strangers might converse with him for hours and 
never know that they were talking to a poet. 

In striking contrast to this trait of the poet was the swagger and 
bluster of his friend, Joaquin Miller, "The Poet of the Sierras," whom 
I met in 1897 when he visited Louisville. Cawein gave an informal 
luncheon to Miller and myself at a cafe where privacy was the chief 
feature. The western poet, clad in cowboy garb, created a mild 
flurry when he entered the dining room, closely followed by Jenkins, 
his obsequious secretary. A bit later he raised a genuine hubbub 
when he discovered that he could not be served with California wine, 
and swore roundly, to the amazement of the other diners. Jenkins 
was dispatched to a neighboring barroom for a bottle of California 
wine, and, although he returned promptly with the designated brand, 
he was berated so scathingly that Cawein was forced to remonstrate 
in his behalf. 

Later in the afternoon Cawein and I accompanied Miller to the 
depot where he was to take a train for Cincinnati. The author of 
"The Danites" and "Columbus," stopped to look into a cigar case. 
He saw a brand with which he was familiar. 

"Give me a dozen of those cigars," he said to the girl in charge. 
He indicated the box by tapping on the glass case with his cane. 
The young woman had made a hasty appraisal of him, and had set 
him down as a Kentucky mountaineer — probably a feudist, for he 
looked the part. 

"Sir," she said timidly, but with an apologetic smile, "those 
cigars are a dollar apiece." 

"I don't care a rap what they are," blustered the poet. "Can't 
you do as you are told?" 

And with that Miller laid a one-hundred-dollar bill on the counter 
and walked away with instructions to Jenkins to bring him the cigars 
and the change. Cawein said after the incident that he admired 
Miller's poetry much more than his manners. 



418 



Reminiscences 

This fragmentary and incoherent recital is by no means a com- 
prehensive review of the personal side of Madison Cawein as I knew 
him for nearly a quarter of a century. I have touched upon only a 
few of the "high lights" of our early acquaintance. Silver shadows 
and serene silence must suffice for the rest. I might extol his devotion 
to his family, his loyalty to his friends, his sacrifices at the shrine of 
art. I might laud his courage in the face of adverse criticism, and 
tell you how more than once he declared to me that he "was not of the 
John Keats fiber" to be "snuffed out by an article." I might recite 
the grim struggle of the last years preceding his death when fortune 
forsook him. These and other episodes; these and other traits of 
character might be enumerated ad infinitum; but I prefer to close these 
desultory remarks with what I have herewith set down — keeping a few 
treasured remembrances folded close to my heart of hearts — and to 
say in the language of the universal poet, "The rest is silence." 



By Anna Blanche McGill 
Louisville, Kentucky 

In a setting highly appropriate for a first glimpse of a poet, and 
especially the subject of these reminiscences, my acquaintance with 
Madison Cawein began. It was a summer evening — late May or early 
June, 1893 — of bright stars, mild fragrant air charged with poetry, 
a Cawein evening. 

Equally did the human element contribute to the glamour of the 
occasion, a festal one in honor of debutantes — Kentucky girls in 
white organdies and other ethereal frocks, with bouquets of American 
Beauties, La France and Jacqueminot roses — a scene to please the 
prosaic as well as a poet. The men were brilliant lawyers, doctors, 
beaux of various attractions. Among those who had been mentioned 
before the festivities was Madison Cawein, commended as a poet of 
some reputation, already a proved favorite of the Lyric Muse. 

Still vivid is his appearance as he was brought up to be presented 
— a slender figure of medium height, quiet and unaffected in manner. 
His demeanor toward the gentler sex was always marked by a courtesy, 
a deference free from the airs and graces of the professional gallant, 
but sincerer and more acceptable. Well defined but not attractive 
according to aesthetic standards, his features had a strength and a 
largeness, notable also in the bone structure of his spare neat figure. 
His eyes were deep-set under heavy brows, changing from gray to blue, 
with sometimes a tinge of olive. As his talent and nature developed, 

419 



Madison C aw e i n 

his eyes became more attractive. Less open, less a-light, though 
always quickly perceptive, they grew more meditative — the eyes of a 
gentle dreamer preoccupied with his visions, his intimations of Ideal 
Beauty and the art which might shape these in enduring poetry. 
As is often noted in rnen of exceptional gifts — men of "power," 
as the phrase goes — his nose was large, as were also his ears. His 
hands offered a particularly interesting study; cast in a firm mould, 
stronger hands than his slight body might have suggested, their 
modelling and expression were typical of the man. They had a trans- 
parency that gave an idea of their structure in the fingers, backs and 
palms. The sapphire in the ring worn on the third finger of his left 
hand, emphasized this transparency, harmonized with it and with 
the veining. Though he could pick a bluet, a frail hepatica, handle 
a jewel or some exquisitely tooled book with the cleanliness and 
gentleness of touch that betoken delicacy and sensitiveness, there 
was no hint of the neurotic or the effeminate so often evident in hands 
of aesthetes. His was a man's hand, an artist's hand, the hand of 
a shaper, steady and deft in movement, vigorous in a friendly clasp. 
Unmistakable was his ring at the door-bell; it sent the echoes clanging 
through the house. 

Thus it resounded a few evenings after the occasion of our first 
acquaintance. In a simple but formal manner he had asked permission 
to call. In that earlier epoch the gentleman asked such permission, 
"hoped he might have the pleasure" or "do himself the honor" of 
calling. Somehow the phrase did not in the least make one feel like an 
eighteenth century heroine or a forbidding austere damsel. There 
was about Madison Cawein a certain dignity which was in keeping 
with a touch of formality. For his hostess, the sense of his dignity 
was heightened by the fact of his riper literary knowledge and his 
seniority in years. His age, then twenty-eight, seemed impressively 
mature. 

The pleasure of the occasion was increased by his presenting me 
with a copy of Days and Dreams, from which he read a number of 
lines. Among these was the stanza from "One Day and Another" 
beginning: "O cities built by music!" His voice moved onward with 
increasingly eloquent intonation: 

Did I but own 
One harp chord of one broken barbiton. 

What a barbiton was I had not the faintest conception; but the word 
evoked an atmosphere of poetry, a suggestion of unfamiliar beauty and 
helped to prolong the conviction that above the dull, dusty plane of 
prose there was another sphere — of fancy, imagination, ideal beauty. 
In that other world my guest was an initiate: 



420 



Reminiscences 

Myth, Romance, 
Where'er I turn, reach out bewildering arms. 
Compelling me to follow. Day and night 
I hear their voices and behold the light 
Of their divinity that still evades. 
And still allures me in a thousand forms. 

Because he held the magic key to that domain of dreams, he was 
welcome in our household where poetry, music and other arts were 
prime interests. He and my mother talked together of the older 
poets and of the stars and the flowers. From the beginning of our 
friendship he seemed to value her sympathy with his discouragements 
and her appreciation of his successes. With my sister, Josephine 
McGill, who was a young girl in her teens when we first made his 
acquaintance, there soon began and continued until his death a happy 
friendship. Many of his poems appealed to her because of their 
lyrical qualities. She composed musical settings for "A Road Song" 
and "Rain and Wind;" it was her intention to do the same service 
for several others. 

In the years immediately following her graduation she occasion- 
ally wrote a story — much to Mr. Cawein's interest. One day he told 
her that he was going to sign her name to a poem of his own, with 
confidence in its being published. The following Sunday morning a 
friend congratulated her on her "poem" — a translation of German 
verse — printed in the Courier Journal. 

The incident was typical of the humorous vein in which Mr. 
Cawein then indulged among those of whose friendship and sympathy 
he was assured. 

During the early years of our association Mr. Cawein was in- 
tensely concentrated upon the reading and writing of poetry. He led 
a serious, systematic, industrious life. Quiet and poised as he usually 
was, his aspiration kept his nerves taut; his impassioned devotion to 
his art signified considerable stress and strain. Yet seen through the 
haze of years, the time comes back as rarely idyllic and as particularly 
fortunate for a group of young idealists and lovers of the arts. The 
days revive as a series of interesting indoor occasions, alternating 
with outdoor excursions when the seasons — especially our enchanting 
Kentucky springs and autumns — permitted. 

With special clearness survives the memory of my first trip to 
the woods with him and another companion. The scene was that rich 
hunting ground of his Muse — the Indiana Knobs, a chain of hills on 
hills rolling northward and westward. That day they wore a glory 
of color: "Amber and emerald, cairngorm, chrysoprase." There, 
where since his boyhood he had been a frequent explorer, he led us 
through 



421 



Madison C a w e i n 

Ways where the brier burns; poplars drop one by one, 

Leaves that seem beaten gold, each Hke a splash of sun 

Ways where the bittersweet, cleaving its pods of gold. 
Brightens the brake with flame, torches the dingle old; 
And where the dogwood too crimsons with ruby seeds; 
Spicewood and buckbush bend ruddy with rosy beads. 

[Quoted from "In the Beech Woods."] 

Absolutely free was Madison Cawein from any pose of superior 
knowledge; yet no one sensitive to the mood of others could have 
failed to note his familiarity with, and his joy in, the wild and lovely 
Nature through which we wandered. To hear him name the ageratum, 
the aster, blazing star and "wilding clematis," was to be sure of his 
intimate fellowship with the flower people — the exquisite heroes and 
heroines, so to speak, of "Garden Gossip," "To A Wind-Flower," 
"The Shadow Garden," and many another poetic fancy. He never 
drew the birds to him by whistle or other imitative call, after the 
custom of many bird-lovers; yet somehow when he was present on 
trips to the woods, we seemed to see and hear more birds than usual — 
an oriole's wing would suddenly flash; cardinal, blue bird, cat-bird 
and hermit thrush would "trail an enchanted flute along;" perhaps, 
going homeward through the after-glow, we would hear "The whip- 
poorwill's complaining, 'whippoorwill."' 

For the sake of dedicating one path to his memory — a highly 
commendable idea — one trail through Iroquois Park has been named 
for him, but those who through many years have gone a-field with 
him know that many paths might be so commemorated. He loved to 
be in the heart of the woods. Breaking through the undergrowth, 
pushing aside briar and bramble, swinging down a hillside, he fre- 
quently blazed his own trail in the pursuit of beauty and the hidden 
Life-of-the-Woods. Such a quest in the deep forest was perhaps a 
keener delight to him than was a prolonged lingering upon the summit 
which, however, held him spell-bound. He rejoiced in the view from 
Scowden's Point overlooking the Bowl in Iroquois Park and from 
other heights whence the eye may travel to Kentucky hills and to 
the Knobs of Indiana. Standing one October afternoon upon a spur 
of these "hills of the West that guard forest and farm," hills splendid 
that day in gold and crimson, bronze and scarlet, he spoke of 

The glimmering woods that glanced the hills between, 
Like Indian faces, fierce with forest paint. 

This was one of the few occasions when he quoted his own lines; 
but, often recalling his exhilaration over the first hepatica, a trilium, 
anemone, a patch of bluets or pansy violets, his companions might 

422 



Reminiscences 

feel sure that they had been present at the inspiration of a poem; 
a scene, a flower might be recognized later when its "lovely image in 
the song rose up." 

One of the last and one of the most delightful excursions in his 
company was a drive with him, his wife and son over the tree- 
bordered road that encircles Iroquois Park, through Dogwood Lane 
and Manslick Road to the country beyond. It was early autumn; 
fields and hills were turning sere, but there was a sunny brightness in 
the air and over the landscape that charmed us all. Two memories 
of the day remain — the magic of the scene and the poet's tenderness 
to his little son. The child's questions and comments, fostered by his 
father's sympathetic answers, were characteristic of a poet's little 
boy. We passed a deserted house, distinctly the type that had so 
often appealed to the poet's fancy and quickened his meditations 
over the human destinies it had once sheltered; it recalled the lines of 
"Abandoned:" 

The hornets build in plaster-dropping rooms, 

And on its mossy porch the lizard lies; 

Around its chimney slow the swallow flies, 

And on its roof the locusts snow their blooms 



Considerable discussion passed between father and son over "the old 
wasp," the witch and similar creatures of fact or fable haunting the 
place — evidently already familiar to the little boy from his father's 
story-telling. The conversation was a commentary on the closeness of 
a true poet's heart, with its fancy and imagination, to the child's 
happy World of Make-Believe. 

Nature to Madison Cawein was always a Wonder World, a world 
of Beauty — and more than Beauty. To walk a-field with him was 
to realize not only how quick were his reactions to the delicate loveli- 
ness of earth, but how profound his interest in its other aspects and 
phenomena — in fact in all cosmic processes. For to him even through 

the Ugliness that toils in night, 
Uncouth, obscure, that hates the glare of day, 
The things that pierce the earth and know no light, 
And hide themselves in clamminess and clay — 
The dumb, ungainly things, that make a home 
Of mud and mire they hill and honeycomb — 
Through these, perhaps, in some mysterious way 
Beauty may speak fairer than wind-blown foam. 

From things despised — even from the crawfish there, 
Hollowing its house of ooze — a wet vague sound 
Of sleepy slime; or from the mole, whose lair, 
BHnd-tunnelled, corridors the earth around, 

423 



Madison Cawein 

Beauty may draw her truths, as draws its wings 
The butterfly from the dull worm that clings 
Cocoon and chrysalis ; and from the ground 
Address the soul through even senseless things. 

[Quoted from "In Solitary Places."] 

Though Madison Cawein seemed in his particular domain 
when among the fields and hills, nonetheless was he the interesting 
poet and man of letters within doors. Occasions of special pleasure 
were those winter evenings when he brought some book to read to us, 
preferably a ghost story; or when he arrived with a bulky manuscript 
of his own verse which we were to hear for the first time. His voice 
had none of the musical qualities — mellowness, flexibility, beauty 
of tone or cadence — that make a pleasing reader; some disliked to hear 
him read. For my part, his reading of his own lines was more satis- 
factory than any one else's presentation. He carried his rhythms as 
he wished them to move; his voice rose to crescendo at climaxes; 
he left with one the poem itself, not a mere agreeable recitation. 
Without conceit over his work or his rendition of it, his mood 
heightened as he read ; his intonation grew more vibrant; the rhythms, 
if not the words, often rang to the floor above — as other members of 
the family would report the next morning. Never to be forgotten 
was his reading of "The Anthem of Dawn," whose beginning he gave 
with a fine swinging rhythm: "Then up the orient heights to the 
zenith that balanced the crescent." By the time he arrived at the 
final lines, his voice was reverberating through the two parlors, the 
hall and up the stairway. 

His appreciation of other poets was expressed in brief comments 
and occasional brief quotation — from Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley. 
Swinburne's great chorus from "Atalanta in Calydon," "When the 
hounds of spring are on winter's traces," was a favorite with him, 
as was Poe's "To Helen in Heaven." With most sympathetic 
spirit on autumnal nights he would begin Barry Pain's lines which, 
no doubt, he would like to have written: "I wanted the sweep of the 
wild wet weather. The wind's long lash and the rain's free fall." 

In the sketch of an author it may seem unnecessary to stress the 
part played by books; yet in Mr. Cawein's case such mention is in 
order because of the significant influence which they exerted upon 
his art. Browning said Italy had been his university; Cawein might 
have made the same claim for books. Lacking the refreshment of 
travel and wide association with intellectual men and women, he found 
in literature the inspiration others found elsewhere. He had little 
desire, time or strength for the distractions that draw others from the 
library — the distractions of afi^airs, society, varied interests; he pre- 
ferred to have a few good friends, leisure for the woods and for reading. 
It was interesting to note the fructifying influence of books upon his 

424 



Reminiscences 

lines, in a phrase or cadence. In his early work his plastic response 
to other writers resulted in a certain imitativeness; later, when he 
had found himself, fainter grew the echos of what he had been 
reading — his distinctiveness had become strong enough to impress 
its own character upon his work. 

As Lowell declared that he was always reading Dante, Madison 
Cawein might have said that he was always reading Shakespeare. 
He was constantly returning to Spenser, Keats, Wordsworth, Horace 
and the German poets; and scarcely less often to the Elizabethan 
lyricists, Tennyson, Browning and Shelley. He delighted in George 
Meredith's "Woods of Westermain" and "Love in the Valley." Among 
his own countrymen of an earlier generation he especially prized Poe, 
Emerson, Aldrich. He cared a great deal for the Southern poets-^ 
Timrod, Hayne, Lanier, Walter Malone. It seemed to me that their 
poetry charmed him partly because of its intrinsic merits, partly 
because it came from that South to which he was always loyal. 
Through his reading and many friendships he kept in touch with 
contemporary poets. In a glow he came one afternoon to bring news 
of Stephen Phillips' "Christ in Hades and Marpessa;" and again 
in similar mood to praise "The Land of Heart's Desire" and other 
poems by William Butler Yeats. With pleasure tempered by dis- 
crimination he valued the poetry of William Watson, John Davidson, 
Arthur Symons, Lawrence Housman, Arthur Christopher Benson. 
He was gratified over the appointment of Robert Bridges to the 
laureateship; the fact that Bridges upheld the traditions of beauty 
compensated for whatever may have been missed in his work. With 
special fervor Mr. Cawein used to recite the laureate's lines, so 
expressive of his own creed : 

"I love all lovely things, 
I praise and adore them." 

Ties of appreciation and friendship united him in many a happy 
fellowship of song to his contemporary American poets — James 
Whitcomb Riley, Bliss Carman, Robert Burns Wilson, Richard 
Watson Gilder, Edmund Clarence Stedman, William Vaughn Moody, 
Edward Arlington Robinson, Henry Van Dyke, Ridgely Torrence, 
Robert E. Lee Gibson, Louise Imogen Guiney, Lizette Woodworth 
Reese, Margaret Steele Anderson, Jessie B. Rittenhouse, Sara Teas- 
dale. He delighted in the art and the successes of his young fellow- 
citizens, Hortense Flexner and David Morton. 

In his reading, as in the general course of his life, he was like an 
Aladdin zealous for the one Wonderful Lamp, therefore content to 
disregard other treasures in his search for the chief object of his quest. 
Hence his reading was intensive rather than discursive. He read 
few essays save those dealing with the outdoor world or literary 

425 



Madison C aw e i n 

subjects. He enjoyed Richard Jeffries, Thoreau, Burroughs, and 
esteemed the criticism that dealt justly with poets. In history he 
read Macaulay, Gibbon, Prescott, the other literary historians and 
those illuminating the various periods that held his interest. He 
relished a good novel; in highly sympathetic mood he one day brought 
me a copy of The Delicious Vice of Novel Reading, by Young E. 
Allison. Imaginative and romantic elements made a novel more to 
his liking, hence his fondness for Cervantes, Scott, Stevenson, Mere- 
dith, Hardy, Turgenev, Kipling. With special gusto he used to read 
to us harrowing ghost stories and tales of mystery. Never forgotten 
is the mood of terror he one night conjured by reading Kipling's "The 
Mark of the Beast" to a companion and myself, leaving us afraid to 
go upstairs after his departure. We finally carried the carving knife 
up with us to sustain our courage and to ward off burglars, ghosts — 
what not! 

In his story-telling vein, as in others, he was at his best tete-a-tete 
or in a small group where he was assured of sympathy and friendship. 
In a large company and in general conversation he did not shine 
brilliantly; but when he did have something to say, the vigor and the 
occasional naivete of his expression always gained attention. The 
fact is, his preoccupation with his own art was so intense that he 
was not keenly interested in commonplace topics and the person- 
alities which inspire small talk and talk for mere talk's sake. 

To the larger questions of the day he was not indifferent; but 
for politics, in their ephemeral, less amiable aspects, he cared nothing. 
Though he bore no active part in civic affairs, his state and country 
inspired his deep devotion. During the Spanish American War 
he wrote his resonant lines, "The Fathers of Our Fathers," and 
"Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin." Although he died before America had 
entered the conflict, the World War drew from his pen poems of 
protest and of pity: "Where The Battle Passed," "The Iron Cross," 
"The Iron Crags," "The Festival of the Aisne," "Portents," "The 
Wanderer." 

His love for Kentucky pervaded nearly all of his work; he wrote 
delightfully of New England and the South, but his nature poems 
were inspired chiefly by the land of his fervent apostrophe: 

O my Kentucky, forest old. 

Where Beauty dwells, the stalwart child 

Of Love and Life, where I behold 

The dreams still glow that long beguiled 

The marble and the bronze of men, 

Whose Art made fair the world of old. . . . 

The depth of his affection for his native soil had no better proof 
than the fact that he preferred his home to the pleasures of travel. 
His intelligence and imagination, of course, found the thought of other 

426 



Reminiscences 

lands beguiling — but not irresistibly beguiling. With perhaps more 
genuine interest than he usually evinced in absence from home, he 
once remarked that he would like to take his son to Oxford and 
sojourn there for a while. But even as he spoke, I felt that he was 
content to remain among the friends and scenes he knew and loved, 
working at his art in that serenity he desired. 

On the whole Madison Cawein preserved an equable temper. 
With the sensitiveness of his type, he was assuredly familiar with 
what the English poet, Alice Meynell, terms "tides of the spirit;" 
he had his seasons of depression as well as his happier hours. Humor 
and wit were not among his distinguishing traits, yet he was quickly 
and cordially responsive to them in others. Genial toward his fellow 
devotees of the Muse, he gave hearty appreciation to those gifted in 
the other arts — to his friends, Miss Patty Thum, Timothy Cole, 
Eric Pape and other artists. Among the musicians he counted many 
friends, including Miss Mildred J. Hill and my sister, Josephine 
McGill. Wherever he found a love of beauty, a taste for the arts, his 
interest was quickened and his friendship assured. 

Sensuous poet as he was, his concern with the spiritual as mani- 
fested in his work and his conversation was gratifying to those who 
seek in the universe something other than a mere alluring pageant of 
form and color. His most ardent admirer cannot claim that his mood 
and lines were continuously spiritual, but he repeatedly gave evidence 
of an intense preoccupation with what he named "the clue that leads 
us to His presence above the starry blue." Much as one dislikes to 
bring into juxtaposition the words, spiritual and spiritualistic, un- 
doubtedly the strain in Mr. Cawein's poetry which deserves the 
former term may be traced partly to his mother's interest in the 
spiritualistic. This influence was noticeable in his early work and in 
his conversation during the first years of our acquaintance. At that 
time he often brought me the papers of the English Society for Psychic 
Research and similar literature. His interest in spiritualistic matters 
never completely waned. 

Allowing for this heritage, temperamental and intellectual, his 
perception of and passion for beauty may be named as factors in the 
development of his sense of the spiritual. The approach to perfection 
which he found in the loveliness of earth teased his fancy with hints 
of a fairer world : 

Whose inexpressible speech declares 

Th' immortal Beautiful, who shares 

This mortal riddle which is ours 

Beyond the forward-flying hours. 

This creed is recurrently stated through many lines, notably in his 
long poem, "In Solitary Places," in "Garden and Gardener" "The 
Lesson," and other short poems and in his plays, "The Shadow 

427 



Madison C aw e i n 

Garden," "The House of Fear" and "The Witch." His meditative 
and lyrical stanzas, characteristically entitled "Intimations of the 
Beautiful," reveal his most elevated thought and mood. They re- 
affirm his aspiration toward "the Ideal with her sun-white crown" 
and his confidence that 

She leads us by ascending ways 
Of Nature to her purposed ends. 

Not continuously did he write and talk in this exalted vein. In 
moods of mental or physical depression and under the influence of 
the agnostic temper prevalent among some of the intellectuals of 
his day, a less idealistic tone marked his conversation and an oc- 
casional line. But, it may safely be asserted that his natural tendency 
and his speculations during those seasons when his talent was ripest 
and his inspiration happiest, inclined him to follow Browning's 
advice, "hope hard in the thing called spirit." He entertained respect 
for the religious affiliations of others, though he himself had none. 
Always gentle, he grew kinder during his last years. He bore no 
grudges. He neither was nor pretended to be faultless; but those who 
had known him long enough to have marked his intellectual and moral 
development felt that the years had increased his apprehensions of 
the finer standards in life and the conduct of life. 

One evening shortly after his last visit to New York he came alone 
to the home of his devoted friend. Dr. Henry A. Cottell. A few 
weeks earlier he had gone East with the hope of finding some mode of 
increasing his income. We had felt that he had not really wished to 
leave Louisville and that he was glad to be home again, near such 
friends of many years as Dr. Cottell and his family, William W. Thum, 
Bert Finck, and his more recent friend, Otto A. Rothert, who for a year 
had been giving him the appreciation later to be expressed in a generous 
tribute, which Madison Cawein would have keenly valued. 

On this particular evening following his return from New York — 
the last time I saw him — he was evidently ill, but he had resumed his 
preparations for a reading and lecture tour. He had not forsaken 
his Muse; a poem was found in his typewriter the morning of his 
apoplectic stroke. In The Bellman [November 14], had recently 
appeared "The Old Dreamer," which Dr. Cottell read aloud. The 
recurrent pathetic cadence, "It is close of day," flashed the prophetic 
thought into my mind: It might serve as the author's own valedic- 
tory. I remarked that it reminded me a little of Aldrich's "Dirge" 
and especially of this line: "On his tired arm slumbers young 
Desire." Mr. Cawein seemed pleased by the allusion. But the art of 
"The Old Dreamer" and its suggestion of another beautiful poem could 
not console us for its pathetic pertinence. The Poet was tired and worn ; 
his whitened hair made him seem a man of sixty rather than fifty. 

428 



Reminiscences 

Yet for all his pallor, his weariness from life's fitful fever, of the 
last difficult years, there remained that characteristic dignity of man- 
ner, that note of quiet distinction and thoughtfulness which more 
and more had stamped his appearance. This note we had for remem- 
brance and as a reconciling factor after his too early death. Such 
preoccupation with his dreams and his art as he had maintained 
signifies a certain triumph over life's ironies and disappointments. 
If he had lived longer, no doubt he might have snared many another 
golden fancy in hi§ net of poetry. His sympathies were deepening, his 
own experiences were widening; therefore he might have left more 
lyrics of the human heart. Yet in a measure we felt that perhaps his 
work was done. His personality had developed from ardent youth to 
thoughtful manhood and had left its impress upon an art, not always 
flawless, yet at its best exquisite, richly beautiful and distinctive. 
He had gained an unique and permanent place in American poetry. 
He had won recognition abroad as well as at home. Because of his 
simplicity, gentleness, art, he had the esteem of many, the affection 
of a faithful group of friends. To have been thus honored and cherish- 
ed, to have pursued with almost unabating fidelity the art of his 
choice, to have borne with reasonable patience the trials of the com- 
mon lot, especially those that beset his path toward the "close of 
day" — this is to have fulfilled a high and, as mortal fortunes go, one 
is tempted to say, a happy destiny. 



By Leigh Gordon Giltner 

Lexington, Kentucky 

It is difficult always to formulate with accuracy and precision 
one's impression of a personality (inevitably a variable quantity,) 
even a personality less complex than that of that creature of infinite 
mood, that pipe for Fancy's finger, the poet. For each of us, even 
the most material, possesses not merely the "two soul-sides" with 
which Browning endows us, but as many as there are human con- 
tacts and relations. As "Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye," 
so are we each to other merely what that other's inner vision, be it 
clear or clouded, can discern. 

Inherent inhibitions and repressions guard the approach to the 
sacred Ego; bulwarks of conscious or unconscious reserve protect the 
"solitude of the sufficient self." "We can only grasp the wings of 
another's Psyche; the dust of the soul comes off upon the alien soul, 
like the dust of a moth's wings on the fingers; but there is no fusion; 
only this soul-dust, like a faint shadow on the clearness of the 
spirit . . ." Rare revelatory moments there may be; subtle half- 

429 



Madison C aw e i n 

tones of understanding and appreciation; but for the elusive essence 
of a poet's nature there is no symbol, no formula, no exact word of 
description. 

For one to whom this singer's poetry made instant appeal far 
back in those earlier days when it appeared, unheralded, in the columns 
of the local press (long ere the Eastern critics set upon it the seal of 
their approval) and to whom, through the years, it has spoken with 
cumulative potence, it would be difficult, in a critical estimate, to 
avoid indulging in superlatives or, as Ruskin phrased it, "promul- 
gating rhapsodies for dogma." But this fragmentary sketch is offered 
not as a judicial appreciation of Madison Cawein, the poet, but as a 
memory of Madison Cawein, the friend. 

Many who have here chronicled their personal reminiscences of 
this rare nature were privileged to know him by closer and more 
constant contact than I; yet of these none knew him more syrnpa- 
thetically and appreciatively. Of our actual face-to-face meetings 
there were perhaps not more than a score, all told. Yet each of these, 
signalized by its illuminative word, its revelatory instant, stands out 
clear and distinct in my memory. And, during the years since I first 
ventured, most inadequately, to celebrate the fragile, marvelous 
quality of certain of his earlier lyrics, there grew up between us, 
through the medium of the pen, a very rich and beautiful friendship 
which endured even to the end. 

The impression of Cawein which I gathered from our first meeting 
at the home of a friend whose inspiring recognition of the faintest 
glimmer of the sacred spark has helped many an embryonic talent 
to its ultimate expression, was of a spirit of practical helpfulness and 
a heartening comradeship. If asked to mention off-hand the most 
salient characteristics of the poet, aside from his supreme gift, I fancy 
the majority of those who knew him most nearly would reply without 
hesitation: "Gentleness and generosity." He gave freely of his 
time, his thought, himself, without question as to the worth or un- 
worth of the recipient of his largesse. His tenderness was infinite; 
his bounty unrestricted. 

His attitude toward the lesser literary luminary was always the 
camaraderie of one craftsman for another ; never the aloof patronage 
of the recognized and established genius who, from his altitude, 
looks down with condescension upon the struggler up the Heliconian 
slope. He was unfailingly ready to extend to the tyro a helping hand ; 
no would-be singer was too lowly for his notice; no song too faltering 
or uncertain to reach his sympathetic ear; no faintest gleam of poetic 
vision too obscure for his discernment. 

He had a large, patient charity for the potential poet whose 
Pegasus stumbled and whose soul soared on Icarian wings. But 
for the conscious, deliberate poseur, the careless craftsman or the 
nature-faker, he had scant tolerance. Himself the closest of nature 

430 



Reminiscences 

students, he knew the call of every bird, the habitat of every woodland 
creature, the time and season for the burgeoning of every blossom, 
the flowering of even the humblest "weeds by the wall;" and he re- 
sented inaccuracy in respect to even the least of these. His care and 
knowledge prevented many an embryo poet from perpetrating (in 
print) some egregious blunder. He was a thoughtful and discerning 
critic and he would have felt himself recreant to his art, had he failed 
to point out even an apparent lapse in fact or form. 

Graciously and ungrudgingly he accepted the office of literary 
censor not only of my earliest attempts at verse, but of those of many 
others. I gratefully recall his spending an entire long morning 
snatched from his own precious work in going over phrase by phrase 
a small collection of my verse, carefully weighing and considering 
each word, pointing out here and there with trained precision a faulty 
line, an inaccuracy of expression, a flaw in technique — and all this 
(a service rendered to countless others) with an apparent interest 
and enthusiasm which lessened the too weighty sense of obligation. 

Himself a careful craftsman, he could not pardon careless work- 
manship in others. He told me once that it was his usual custom, 
having drafted a poem, to lay it aside for a month or more; then, with 
a new perspective, he would study and revise it. If still not wholly 
satisfied, the process would be repeated. A single inept word was 
to him a fatal blemish upon the beauty of an otherwise flawless poem; 
again and again he revised his every line — hence the faultlessness of 
phrase which the English critics so warmly praised. 

In my acquaintance with Mr. Cawein I was struck by his utter 
lack of personal egotism. There was no attempt at self-exploitation 
under any circumstances. He sometimes mentioned, gratefully, 
the honors and appreciation his poems brought him, but always 
simply, almost humbly. He seemed, in a sense, to regard himself 
impersonally, not as an individual but as "the chalice which held the 
amber wine." Absorbed in his art and all his inclusions he undeniably 
was; genuinely proud of such recognition as it brought him; but the 
egotist, never. 

His judgment of his fellow- writers was of the kindest. I recall 
once, in discussing a singularly caustic review of the work of an author 
inimical to Cawein and his work, the latter said; "But that is too 
sweeping, too severe! The man has done good work along with the 
bad. This reviewer sees only his short-comings; it is not just or 
fair." That was characteristic. He was far more lenient to the 
faults of others than to his own, to which he was keenly alive and which 
he strove patiently to overcome. And toward his severest critics, 
he seldom showed rancor. He spoke of his detractors, usually, with 
a sort of whimsical tolerance, though occasionally a rank injustice 
would strike fire. The cumulative effect of world-contact and the 
chastening years was an infinite patience and a gentleness not un- 
touched with pathos. 

431 



Madison C aw e i n 

It seemed to me when I last met Mr. Cawein, more than a year 
before his passing, that, perhaps by reason of his failing health, he 
had become imbued with a sense of deadening futility; that he fol- 
lowed less hopefully "the vision and the gleam." Yet his fine feeling 
for beauty and his passion for his art persisted. 

It is the history of practically all our poets that the "glory- 
garland" comes only after death has ended the dream; and to the 
genius of Madison Cawein shall yet be accorded a wider acclaim and 
a truer appreciation than he ever knew. 

A great poet and a great soul, yet withal a simple, kindly gen- 
tleman who loved his family and was loyal to his friends. A rare 
genius, indeed, but none the less a being finely human, who, though 
he walked with the immortals, yet took thought of the lowliest of 
earth. 

"Love shares with the soul its precious immortality;" so, among 
the bays which garland the memory of an incomparable poet, blooms 
a spray of rosemary for the gentle spirit which seems still to linger 
in his familiar haunts and with his faithful friends. 



By Henry A. Cottell, M. D. 
Louisville, Kentucky 

Madison Cawein 

The dogwood, maple, beech, and sassafras 
Stand shivering in Winter's frost and gloom; 
The sunflower, aster, gentian in their tomb 
Deflowered, scentless, withered, sleep, while pass 
The chill winds wailing through the dry dead grass. 
The birds are hushed, and in their vine-decked room 
The squirrel, bee, and woodchuck shall resume 
No more their Indian summer play, Alas! 
For he who loved them, and whose wizard touch 
Unlocked their beauty, wields no more the hand 
That linked their magic to immortal verse. 
Aye me! that death should hold in cruel clutch 
The soul that made this ground enchanted land; 
That he immortal born should own the mortal curse. 

H.A. C. 

Midway of the last decade of the nineteenth century I heard that 
a real poet had been born in Louisville; but I had never seen him nor 
any of his poetry. One day, some time in 1895, while in the 
street, in conversation with the late distinguished Dr. Edward Rush 

432 



Reminiscences 

Palmer, I saw a plain and modest looking young man walk by. He 
bowed to the doctor without speaking. "Madison Cawein, the 
poet," said Palmer. My interest awoke at once. I looked at and 
after the passing stranger, but not without disappointment. His 
figure was awkward, his torso bent, his legs somewhat bowed, and his 
gait ungraceful. 

Learning that he daily visited the printing house of John P. 
Morton and Company, and having journalistic work that called me 
there, I sought, in vain, to interview him at that place, his hours 
and mine not tallying. Through the kindness of a mutual friend, 
Mr. Alexander E. Macfarland, who told Cawein that I wished to 
make his acquaintance, he honored me with a call. Our meeting 
was embarrassed: the poet, whom I took for a patient, had to 
introduce himself. In a few minutes, however, under his mild 
but penetrating eye, his modest demeanor and unpretentious 
language, I was at home with him, and then and there was installed 
a friendship destined to last unbroken for twenty years. 

He had heard that I intended to notice his work before the 
Louisville Conversation Club, and brought for my use several of his 
published volumes: Blooms of the Berry, The Triumph of Music, 
Days and Dreams, Moods and Memories, Red Leaves and Roses, and 
Intimations of the Beautiful. These books, in two of which are the 
author's pencil marks of preference for the poems submitted, I hold 
today as a precious legacy. He had not only marked the poems of 
his preference, but had scratched the titles of several that he intended 
to discard or reserve for future remodeling. Of those he preferred I 
noted, "The Red Bird," "The Creole Serenade," "Ishmael," "A 
Pre-existence," "A Niello," "Some Summer Days," passages from 
"One Day and Another," the sublime description of the ride 
before the night storm which is the opening of "Wild Thorn and 
Lily," the original rough draft of "The Rain Crow," "The Feud," 
the most dramatic of his poems, and that miracle of music and 
color, "The Whippoorwill." 

Mr. Cawein's quiet temperament and unpretentious manner 
bespoke mental equipoise and power; but no one at first meeting 
would get any intimation of his poetic genius from his demeanor or 
conversation. His language was clear, sometimes with a witty turn, 
but never savored of conscious self esteem. In familiar talk with 
friends he often referred to authors, old and modern, classic and 
popular, and occasionally recited their words; but, while on request 
he would read from his own works he never, in conversation, quoted 
himself. He said he could not repeat from memory one complete 
poem of the hundreds he had written. He never did recite one to 
me; yet if anyone in repeating his poetry changed or misplaced a 
word, he at once detected the error and then and there corrected it. 
He not only could not, or would not, repeat from memory his poetry, 

433 



Madison C aw e i n 

but did not, on one occasion, recognize it when old and cold it was 
brought to his notice. A most "Caweinish" poem, "The Watcher," 
copied by me from Intimations of the Beautiful [1894] for recitation, 
I showed him in 1914, and asked his opinion of it. He read it 
carefully, spoke approvingly of its merit and asked me who was its 
author, exhibiting amusing surprise when I told him that it was 
his own. 

■ The poet was methodical in his work and habits, and punctilious 
to the minute in his appointments. His impatience was manifest 
if any party to an engagement came even a little late. His daily 
habit was to rise at 5 a. m., write until breakfast, 8 A. m., and 
attend to business until 12 o'clock. He then spent an hour at the Club 
[Cawein became a member of the Pendennis Club, December 5, 1906], 
then went to lunch, then to the fields and woods (except when 
season or weather forbade) and dined at 6 p. m. He then went 
to the theatre or home of a friend. He got his inspirations from woods 
and fields, entertainments and friendly intercourse by day, slept on 
them over night and coined them into verse in the golden morning 
hours. 

His fidelity to truth was conspicuous. He could not tolerate 
dishonesty, hypocrisy or chicanery. Once your friend he was your 
friend forever. His solicitude for my reputation was sometimes 
comical. He was as gentle as a woman and his naivete was childlike 
in that he could not keep a secret. The centrifugality of what must 
not be told was too strong for his prudence, would out in spite of it, 
and sometimes to his own hurt or discomfiture. Cawein was prodi- 
gal in generosity. He gave presents galore to his friends and could 
resist no appeal from the needy. He contributed toward the support 
of more than one dependent relative. He not infrequently bestowed 
his bounty upon unworthy recipients. At times when I knew him_ to 
be in financial straits I have seen him hand out money to soliciting 
strangers on the street. 

Cawein not infrequently appeared in public, not for any desired 
notoriety, for he would not be lionized, but in compliance with 
requests from worthy institutions and causes. On these occasions he 
read without pay his papers on literature or selections from his 
poems. He was a member of the Filson and Louisville Literary 
Clubs. He was active in both organizations and served a term as 
president of the latter. He was a ready off-hand speaker on the floor 
at their meetings, but as presiding officer or master of assemblies he 
sometimes blundered most comically. There was never malice or 
sarcasm in his speech ; but his awkward way of introducing readers or 
speakers was often unintentionally uncomplimentary to them. 

His patience and resignation under affliction and misfortune were 
saintly. With the equipoise of a stoic he bore the weight of bodily 
disease, domestic trials and financial reverses, without murmur or 

434 



Reminiscences 

complaint. One morning, I found him seated in the Silent Room of 
the Pendennis Club, and in deep dejection. He scarcely looked up 
as I gave him greeting. He said, "I am a ruined man. I was sold 
short in the market this morning, and I fear that the savings of my 
lifetime are gone. Can you find me something to do? I must take 
a position and do something besides literary work." And this from 
an unselfish and untiring laborer of more than a quarter of a cen- 
tury! He immediately retrenched in every direction, rented his 
beautiful house, sold some of his furniture, many of his books, 
and moved into smaller quarters, where, for the short term of life 
yet to be his, he lived without going into debt, wrote incessantly and 
saved a small patrimony for his widow and son. "The Old Dreamer," 
that musical monody of resignation in defeat, dejection, and despair, 
was written at this time — 191 3. 

Cawein was fond of company. His home was always open to 
friends and visitors. Like his historic kinsmen, the knights and 
troubadours of old, he could talk of tournaments if not participate 
in them, grace the fair with compliment, and carve at board. His 
performance in this capacity was comparable only to his mastership 
of assemblies. The turkey was slashed and dismembered in a 
manner most ungraceful and distributed to the guests in hunks 
unsightly, if forsooth it did not land in the carver's lap or on the floor. 
Cawein said that alcoholic liquors made him sick and justified his 
prognosis by seldom taking on any occasion more than one drink. He 
was fond of a good cigar and smoked for comfort and good cheer 
when not at work. 

That petite casket of gems, pictures, and chefs d'oeuvre of sympa- 
thetic and metaphysical musing upon man and nature, which he 
named Undertones touches me vitally and marks an eventful period in 
our friendship. Soon after the beginning of our acquaintance the 
poet read the book in manuscript to my little family. In depth of 
feeling, idyllic delineation, sympathy and color, this book is, I think, 
not surpassed by anything written by him before or since, though he 
always frowned when I told him so. 

This reading of Undertones led to the informal establishment of a 
literary and musical coterie of which the poet was the center and 
inspiration, for twenty years. He, with like-minded friends, met at 
my house nearly every Sunday night. It was there that the writings 
of many authors, with interludes of music, were read and recited 
and various topics of literature discussed; but the life of it was the 
poet and his work. It was there that visitors and friends heard him 
read from manuscript many of his poems and essays. The fame of 
this gathering brought to our home many ladies and gentlemen of 
distinction, not only of our own town, but sometimes visitors from 
other American and foreign cities. Dr. Henry Van Dyke, through 
Cawein's kindness, honored my home with two calls. On those delight- 

435 



Madison C aw e i n 

ful evenings the two God-gifted poets brought the muses to our 
fireside. The first visit took place in 1908. Cawein was in high spirits 
and read some of his finest sonnets and lyrics ; Van Dyke read several of 
his shorter poems and one of Browning's; I recited "The Rain Crow," 
"The Feud," "End of Summer," "Uncalled" and other poems by 
Cawein, and the "Wings of a Dove" by Van Dyke. The poets came 
early "to spend fifteen minutes" with us, but did not leave until 
after midnight. The second visit was made a few years later and 
was esthetically in accord with the first. 

Cawein had many friends and no enemies. He loved his friends 
and they loved him. His relations with Henry Van Dyke I have 
noted, but there remains a goodly number whose friendly inter- 
course with the poet enhanced his happiness. Such were James 
Whitcomb Riley the poet, and Jessie B. Rittenhouse, the poet and 
critic; and among Kentuckians, Young E. Allison, Anna Blanche 
McGill, Bert Finck, William Warwick Thum, Reuben Post Halleck, 
Lucien V. Rule, Mrs. Elvira Sydnor Miller Slaughter, Margaret 
Steele Anderson, Ethel Allen Murphy, Marion Forster Gilmore, Cale 
Young Rice, Charles Hamilton Musgrove, Anna Logan Hopper, David 
Morton and Otto A. Rothert. 

Riley testified his admiration of the man and his verse in a 
felicitous poem, "A Southern Singer," written on the reception of a 
presentation copy of Lyrics and Idyls and soon thereafter published 
it in Green Fields and Running Brooks. In this poem it is easy to see 
the influence of Cawein's genius. In 1891 the Hoosier Poet dedicated 
The Flying Islands of the Night to Cawein. 

Some men of eminence took Cawein's work adversely. Richard 
H. Stoddard fiercely assailed him and recommended that "pen, ink 
and paper be withheld from a man who did such execrable work." 
[Mail and Express, New York, March 29, 1895; "World of Letters".] 
An incident that enhanced Stoddard's literary nausea came out at last. 
The great critic had mistaken Cawein's poem "Noera," which he saw 
unsigned in a newspaper, for an Elizabethan lyric, and wrote to a 
literary friend flattering himself upon his discovery. James Lane 
Allen on reading Shapes and Shadows told Cawein that the book was 
a poetic failure, and advised him to quit writing verse. And this in 
spite of the fact that the volume contained not less than three of 
Cawein's most deeply conceived and characteristically original poems, 
to-wit: "Rain," "A Catch," and "A Song for Old Age," while the 
"Epilogue" is a masterpiece of difficult versification not excelled by 
Browning, Southey, Tennyson or Swinbourne. 

The literary coterie of New York repeatedly wined him, dined 
him and lionized him in true Gotham style. He was once the guest 
of Edward Arlington Robinson in his New York retreat, and was 
struck with the poet's anchoritic and reclusive life. On a number of 
occasions he visited Harrison S. Morris in Philadelphia, Clinton 

436 



Reminiscences 

Scollard in New York, Henry Van Dyke in Princeton, Eric Pape in 
Massachusets, Robert E. Lee Gibson in St. Louis and James Whit- 
comb Riley in Indianapolis. 

Cawein held his own work in no exalted esteem. He was a 
stranger to that conceit so common among many writers of moderate 
ability. He loved the masters and encouraged all talented beginners. 
He read every volume of worth in classic and contemporary literature. 
He reverenced Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton; loved Byron, Shelley 
and Keats; studied in the original, Goethe, Schiller, Geibel, Uhland 
and Lenau (turning much of their verse into rhythmic English) ; revelled 
in Bryant, Whittier, Longfellow, Emerson, Browning and Swinbourne; 
almost worshipped Poe, and stood in awe of Wordsworth and Tenny- 
son. He said to me repeatedly: "Don't put Tennyson's poems along 
with mine in your recitals; it hurts me to hear them read together. 
Tennyson accentuates my poetic inferiority." This was no play for 
compliment; his earnestness showed that he meant and felt it. 

He seldom made impromptu verse, and though ready with it on 
occasion, never, so far as I know, committed it, except in one instance, 
to writing. Presenting me with a copy of Chatterton he wrote, with 
apologetic protest, the following upon a fly leaf of the book: 

The volume of the saddest life in song 

Slain by the world's great wrong — 

Chatterton. 

The boy who strove, aspired and died, 

Dark sorrow's son. 

O'er whose sad, early grave, how many poets have sighed. 

This was written without erasure or correction. His inspirations were 
not uncommon. Riding or walking with me he would now and then 
whisper in my ear some spontaneous rhythmic or rhymed conceit, 
but he did not commit it to paper, and sometimes disowned it when 
I repeated it to friends in his presence. 

An example of his marvelous facility in composition is his pro- 
phetic poem on the inception of the Spanish-American War, "Mene, 
Mene, Tekel, Upharsin." He conceived it at breakfast, composed it 
during a walk of fourteen squares to business, and wrote it down before 
taking up the work of the day. 

His "Processional," the epilogue of Myth and Romance, was 
composed at my suggestion. One autumn night we sat watching the 
constellations. We gazed into the celestial deep and were talking of 
the distance, immensity and glory of the stars. He recited those noble 
lines of Francis W. Bourdillon, beginning "Night has a thousand 
eyes." And I answered with three stanzas from Tennyson's "Palace 
of Arts," beginning "Hither, when all the deep unsounded skies." 
I said "Madison, why don't you write a poem on the stars?" He 

437 



Madison C aw e i n 

answered, "I can't; the theme is overpowering; you do it." The 
next time he came he read to me his "Processional," which in point 
of sublimity is not excelled by any poetic flight of my ken. 

Cawein was not only an omnivorous reader, but a genial and ready 
correspondent. He wrote rapidly and legibly in script, and in a 
literary style that sometimes rose into poetry. His letters to his friend, 
Robert E. Lee Gibson, a congenial brother poet and worshipful 
admirer, would make a volume of classic epistolary literature had 
they all been preserved. His correspondence with men of eminence 
was extensive. Many letters were written to him about his books, and 
not a few of them were read to me at their reception. They were from 
such men as William Dean Howells, James Whitcomb Riley, Frank 
Dempster Sherman, Clinton Scollard, James Lane Allen, Henry 
Van Dyke, Frank L. Stanton, Joel Chandler Harris, Edmund Gosse, 
Eric Pape, Richard Watson Gilder, Cale Young Rice, Young E. 
Allison, Theodore Roosevelt, Joaquin Miller, Edmund Clarence 
Stedman, Edward Arlington Robinson, Edwin Markham, Thomas 
Bailey Aldrich, and many other celebrities, male and female. 

I well remember Aldrich's comments upon Weeds by the Wall,SLn(\ 
how he showed his appreciation of the unique songs that enrich that 
volume by telling Cawein that "Reed Call for April" should urge 
all American composers to rivalry for the honor of being the first 
to set it to music. No musician can read Weeds by the Wall and not 
own that Madison Cawein was the unrivaled prince of writers of 
song-poetry. It is true that the group of songs that characterize this 
volume (published in 1901) were in part inspired by incidents of his 
courtship with the beautiful and talented young woman who became 
his wife, and that her charming soprano voice found echo in the 
musical outpour of the poet's soul. But many songs written by him 
long before he met the lady, measure up well with these — for instance 
"Creole Serenade," "The Gipsy Maiden" and "The Tryst," but 
the music of "The Floridian," "Love in a Garden," "Love and a 
Day," "Meeting and Parting," and "Reed Call for April," in Weeds 
by the Wall is inefifable. The words sing themselves. And this 
from a man who had no technical knowledge of music as an art 
or science. That he got inspiration from the great music masters, I 
know, for he reverenced Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and 
Wagner, was often at the opera and symphony, and talked sensibly 
and sympathetically of the effect of great music upon the soul. 
A man whose soul found no response in "the music of the future" 
could not have written a sonnet like "Light and Wind." 

Cawein's highest joy, nevertheless, was in simple melody and song. 
His favorite composer was Mozart, whose minuet in "Don Giovanni" 
he never tired of listening to. The appealing melodies of Schubert, 
Foster, Nevin, Abt, Kuchen and their kind, delivered through the 
sympathetic voice of his accomplished wife, were ever a solace to his 

438 



Reminiscences 

soul. He expressed unqualified admiration for that little master- 
piece, "The Shepherd Boy," which at his request I often played for 
him on the reed organ. The music of Cawein's poetry appeals to 
every ear. His poem "The Old Spring," like Tennyson's "Flow 
down cold rivulet to the sea," is simply and entirely a piece of music 
in words. And from poems like this we pass on, as in a great sym- 
phony, through movement, melody, feeling and color to such master- 
pieces of blended color and sound as "The Climbing Cricket." Is it 
any wonder that Eric Pape, J. Bernhard Alberts, Miss Patty Thum, 
and their brother artists hailed Cawein as the harbinger of a new 
evangel in the pictorial art? Of "The Climbing Cricket" the poet 
said "I think I got the insect into those lines correctly; and they say 
one can't get realism into poetry without ruining it. Here is realism, 
I think, and it's poetry, too." 

"In the Lane" and "In Autumn" are among the musical poems 
about which the poet talked to me during or just after their com- 
position. "In the Lane" was written under the chastisement of 
bodily disease. He was housed with dropsical limbs and failing 
heart, expecting early death. It was a song born of deep affliction. 
If he had died at that time (1902) it would have been as Tennyson's 
"Crossing the Bar" should have been, a poet's Swan Song ineffable. 
Commenting on "In Autumn" he said that in writing the poem he 
had in mind the lines: "That strain again! It had a dying fall," etc., 
from "Twelfth Night." He asked me if he had attained the Shakes- 
pearian mood, and I answered, "Yes, but your fall is deeper." 

Howells in his first notice of Cawein, whom he justly claimed to 
have discovered, said that some of his poems are probably color only, 
and warned the young poet of the danger of too much color in his 
poetry. A few years later, however, Cawein wrote his wonderful 
monochrome "The Red-Bird," a poem which as a piece of original and 
difficult art stands alone in English verse: 

The Red-Bird 

Red clouds and reddest flowers, 

And now two redder wings 
Swim through the rosy hours; 
Red wings among the flowers, 

And now the redbird sings. 

God makes the red cloud's ripples 

Of flame that seem to split 
In rubies and in dripples 
Of rose where rills and ripples 

The singing flame that lit. 

439 



Madison C a w e i n 

Red clouds of sundered splendor — 

God stooped and spake a word, 
Rich, sweet, and wild and tender — 
And in the sunset splendor 

The word became a bird. 

He flies beneath the garnet 

Of clouds that flame and float — 
When Summer hears the hornet 
Hum round the plum, turned garnet — 

Heaven's music in his throat. 

Hugh Reginald Haweis said that Wagner in one of the scenic 
effects of "Rhine-Gold," had given prophesy of a new art, "The Color 
Symphony," wherein light, through color, shall be made by harmony, 
rhythm and modulation to stir the emotions through the eye as does 
sound through the ear. Did the essay of the English critic inspire 
the color conceit of the American poet? 

Cawein was a Latin scholar and made some excellent transla- 
tions from the poets of the Golden Age; but though full of the Greek 
spirit, like Keats, his Greek brother, he knew nothing of the language 
of Hellas. Edmund Gosse said: "He brings the ancient gods to 
Kentucky, and it is marvelous how quickly they learn to be at home 
there." As evidenced by such poems as 'Myth and Romance," 
"Genius Loci," "Dionysia" and many more, there is pertinence in 
Mr. Gosse's statement; but in truth, Cawein does not make the gods 
so much at home in Kentucky as he makes himself at home with 
them in Hellas. 

Cawein read scripture but little and, except for some of its poetic 
passages, was almost a stranger to the Bible. He never went to 
Sunday School. He valued the Psalms, Job and Isaiah, and knew the 
Mountain Sermon and the parables of the Divine Poet whose "sinless 
years had breathed beneath the Syrian blue." Scripture, however, 
not having been the chief factor in his early education, he seldom 
quoted and rarely drew from it characters and incidents; neverthe- 
less he took successfully some pictures from that source, as in 
"Miracles." 

The religious vein permeating Cawein's poems is so evident that 
the eminent theologian, Dr. W. W. Landrum, in a talk before the 
Louisville Literary Club at the Cawein Memorial Meeting in 1918, 
declared that a system of theology could be constructed from his 
works. Cawein was not religious in any credal, orthodox or even 
heterodox way; nor was he moral in the technical sense of the word. 
His religion was the instinctive worship of God in nature, and his 
morals were the natural outflow of a heart in sympathy with man in 

440 



Reminiscences 

nature and nature in man. Indeed it can be said that throughout his 
thirty-six volumes one will scarcely meet with a poem that does not 
substantiate this claim. In fact he was a Pantheist and sincerely 
believed in spirits and the spirit world. The following from "The 
Shadow Garden," which the poet copied on the fly leaf of The Shadow 
Garden and Other Plays presented to me, might be put forward as his 
metaphysical demonstration of immortality: 

Life is but a dream . 

A dream that's born again for new delight — 

Spring does not perish; nor the rose. — Imperishable, 

They have immortal life, retaining each 

Its own identity within the soul: 

Part of the dreams are they that they suggest: 

Symbolic thoughts through which our mother. Nature, 

Expresses her desires, and aye renews 

Her Beauty. So there's no such thing as death. 

Cawein was a dramatist, as is shown by "The Man Hunt," 
"The Feud," "Bryan's Station," and many shorter poems. But his 
dramatic power is definitely put forth in four long and serious plays: 
"The Shadow Garden," "The House of Fear," "The Witch" and 
"Cabestaing." These dramas, with their abundant natural illustra- 
tions, touch every phase of human life. They represent long study and 
deep thought. But it may be questioned if their character delinea- 
tions and dramatic situations are such as to give them permanent 
life upon the stage. 

He had wit and sometimes wrote playfully; but he owned no 
facility in humorous composition. In conversation he now and then 
made a witty remark or comparison, but his attempts at humorous 
satire were heavy — for example, "The Ass" and "The Bagpipe," 
both of which appear in New Poems. The first seems pointless; the 
second may be funny enough to raise a smile, but not a laugh. 

In conversation he now and then made a witty remark. I recall 
on one occasion he said to a young lady whom he surprised at work in 
the kitchen: "You are as busy as a fly on a salad." One summer even- 
ing, he was riding with some lady friends who were startled by a loud 
cry issuing from the open door of a drinking house, and when they 
asked its meaning, he answered "That's a high-bawl." 

Cawein is called by some superficial critics and readers a "Nature 
Poet." And certain German critics, not seeing the German element 
in his fancy, romance and idyllic delineation, called him an ''Herb 
Dichter' — a "Vegetable Poet." That he was a nature poet no one can 
deny; but so was the great classic poet Milton and the great meta- 
physical poet Wordsworth. But the appellation "Nature Poet" can 

441 



Madison C aw e i n 

be no more specifically applied to Cawein, thus limiting his force to 
the production of pictures of nature only, than it can be to his two 
great congeners. He found, as did they, ever in nature themes, 
analogies and suggestion for imaginative, metaphysical, human and 
superhuman flights. His favorite poems of Milton were "Comus," 
"L'allegro" and "II Penseroso" and of Wordsworth the "Ode to Im- 
mortality" "Tintern Abbey" and "The Old Leech Gatherer." 

The human touch is plainly felt in every one of his nature poems, 
as in "There Are Fairies," "The Old Barn," "Late November," "The 
Winds," "Indian Summer," "The Old Spring," "Conclusion," "End 
of Summer," "In the Lane," and in many others. In every one we 
see the reflex of nature in the poet's soul; in every one he awakens 
spirits who through miracles of harmony and color speak to the heart 
of man. What a Bible lesson we have in "Miracles"! What meta- 
physical lessons we have in "The Oversoul" and "Light" and what 
elemental superhuman lessons we have in "Despair," "Too Late," 
"Qui Docet Discit," and "Garden Gossip"! 

Cawein corrected, rewrote and polished his writings endlessly. 
He would never allow anyone to read his unfinished work. He 
generally improved the verse, but also, like other poets, he sometimes 
damaged it, too. For instance, "Creole Serenade" and "The Whip- 
poorwill," two ineffable songs in first draft, carry in their later 
editions scars of these correction-wounds to the serious damage 
of their form and figure, while "The Rain Crow," "A Niello" 
and many others come from crude beginnings to an evolution of 
perfect beauty. Cawein was a good creator, but a bad critic. How- 
ever, in the charactfei" sketches of certain authors, as in his sonnets to 
Poe, Riley, the Brownings, and others, he shows that he had read 
their works with full understanding and appreciation. 

Whatever may be the worth of Cawein's contributions to the 
poetry of the English language and American literature, the beauty 
of his simple, earnest, unpretentious and self-abnegative life is to us, 
who knew and loved him, more than all. He had the simplicity, the 
sympathy, the spontaneity that spell genius, but with it all none of 
those weaknesses, eccentricities and vices that so often disfigure 
men of extraordinary mental endowment. I have likened him, not 
inaptly, I trust, to Wordsworth and Milton, for in his sympathy with 
nature, his insight as to its meaning and its reflex upon the soul, he 
was of a piece with the former, while in his hold upon the human 
heart, his martyr-like sincerity, earnestness and oneness of purpose, 
his noble soul claims kindred with the latter. 

The stroke that ended his life was shockingly sudden. On the 
morning of December 6th, 1914, he had done his early morning work, 
as was his custom, had breakfasted and was about to leave home. A 
fall in the bathroom, doubtless caused by vertigo, ruptured an artery 
in the brain and broughj: him to death by apoplexy. He was in 

442 



Reminiscences 

complete coma when found by his wife a few minutes after the fall. 
He never regained consciousness, and in spite of such assiduous care 
as love, friendship and science could render, lingered for seventy-two 
hours, and, "painlessly attained the end of pain." A post mortem 
showed extensive disease of the cerebral arteries and proved that, 
barring the blow of the fall, he could not have lived much longer. 

No death, of scholar, philanthropist, patriot or poet, caused 
deeper grief or truer expressions of genuine mourning among all 
classes in Louisville. His funeral appropriately conducted at the 
Unitarian Church by the Rev. Maxwell Savage, the pastor, and Dean 
Charles Ewell Craik, of Christ Church Cathedral, attracted a crowd 
of appreciative mourners. The service, simple and impressive, was 
solemnized by the singing of several of the poet's favorite hymns, 
"Lead Kindly Light" and "Friend After Friend Departs," and the 
"Lacrymosa" of the "Requiem Mass," the playing of the Mendels- 
sohn funeral march, the "Dead March in Saul," the reading of his own 
"Dreams" and "Requiem," and by appropriate remarks from the 
pastor. 

Thus lived, thus died Kentucky's noblest and perhaps America's 
greatest poet. His work must stand the test of time and will doubt- 
less be found true. His sunny spirit has gone out from the circle of 
day, and the solemn question where, with its awful significance, bids 
us pause once more ere we say farewell. Has it gone like a meteor 
lighting for a moment the dismal void with the scintillations of 
disintegration and decay? Has it gone like a comet upon a curve 
that admits of no return, to sail endlessly deeper and deeper into the 
infinite abyss? Or has it, like gentle Hesperus, but faded for a season 
among the many tinted clouds of evening twilight to shine anon with 
clearer luster in the morning sky? Let us have faith to hold it so, 
while we say our last farewell to the solemn music of his own sad 
dirge ["At Last" written in 1895]: 

What shall be said to him. 

Now he is dead? 
Now that his eyes are dim. 

Low lies his head? 
What shall be said to him, 

Now he is dead? 

One word to whisper of 

Low in his ear; 
Sweet, but the one word "love" 

Haply he'll hear. 
One word to whisper of 

Low in his ear. 



443 



Madison C aw e i n 

What shall be given him, 
Now he is dead? 

Now that his eyes are dim, 
Low lies his head? 

What shall be given him. 
Now he is dead? 

Hope, that life long denied 
Here to his heart, 

Sweet, lay it now beside. 
Never to part. 

Hope, that life long denied 
Here to his heart. 



By Henry Van Dyke 

AvALON, Princeton, New Jersey 

My acquaintance with the poet Madison Cawein began with his 
sending me a copy of his beautiful little book Red Leaves and Roses. 
This volume was published in 1893. He sent it some time in the early 
nineteen hundreds; the exact date I can not recall; but the gift was 
unexpected and delightful, and I remember writing a letter of grati- 
tude for the great pleasure which the book gave me in the reading, 
and sending him a volume of stories to acknowledge (though surely 
not to repay) my debt. 

These verses of Cawein gave me my first impression of his poetic 
powers — the keenness of his eyes and ears, the swiftness and singular 
freedom of his fancy, the breadth of his imaginative sympathy, and 
his remarkable sense of music in words and rhythms. 

By the evidence of this little volume he was clearly one of those 
whom we call "nature-poets," because they have the gift of per- 
ceiving and interpreting what Nature shows us in her rich outpouring. 
But he was more than that. He was a poet of human feeling — quickly 
responsive to the deeper as well as to the lighter impulses which move 
the heart of man. The lyrics in the idyl called "Wild-Thorn and 
Lily," and a hundred other verses of like quality, show his depth and 
sincerity of emotion. He was also a poet of vivid imagination. The 
world in which he lived, and in which he knew and named the trees 
and flowers and birds, was a world saturated with history and old 
romance and fairy lore full 

Of forests, and enchantments drear. 
Where more is meant than meets the ear. 

444 



Reminiscences 

Take, for example, the opening stanzas of that weird little poem called 
"Hieroglyphs." 

My dreams are older than the trees. 

Being but newer forms of change; 
Some savage dreamed mine; and 'twas these 

De Leon sought where seas were strange. 

My thoughts are older than the earth 

Being of beauty ages wrought; 
Old when creation gave them birth. 

When Homer sang them, Shakespeare thought. 

Thus the gift of one small book made me know the man in his mind 
and heart, a dreamer with his eyes wide open, a weaver at the magic 
loom, making the ancient patterns glow and glitter with new threads 
gathered from the fields and woodlands of Kentucky. 

Later, when I knew him in the body, through meetings in New 
York, arid here at Avalon, and in Louisville, the first impression of 
his nature and character was in no wise changed. His thoughtful 
face, with hazel eyes set rather wide apart, dreamy and tranquil at 
most times, yet capable of brightening into an intense, piercing gaze 
as if some inward fire shown through them; his quiet manner, un- 
assuming yet not bashful nor awkward, retiring but never repellant, 
full of serene enthusiasms and fine loyalties; his voice, rather low and 
sometimes hesitant, yet very clear and understandable, with just a 
touch, the slightest touch, of the alluring softness of the Kentucky 
accent — everything about the man seemed to fit in with his character. 
He was a person who saw and heard more than he said; a poet who 
never "dressed the part" but lived it; a man who never claimed 
attention but always rewarded it. 

My most vivid recollections of Cawein are connected with certain 
visits to Louisville; one in March, 1908, when I went to that charrning 
city to deliver a course of insufferably dull lectures before the brilliant 
"Woman's Club;" and two or three other visits of a more flying 
kind, just for the pleasure of seeing my friends. 

It was a delightful society. There were men and women who had 
won national fame by their writings in prose and verse. Others, to 
whom fame had not yet come, deserved it for their wit and wisdom. 
But the coyness of the fickle goddess Publicity did not seem to trouble 
them. They were not pushing, log-rolling, wire-pulling. They simply 
enjoyed living and wished the stranger to share their joy. He did. 
Who could help being happy in such an atmosphere of hospitality. 
Both mind and body were feasted with fine fare. In this good company 
the Caweins had their own place and shone with a peculiar lustre. 

Mrs. Cawein had the gifts of beauty, music, and a lovely voice — 
the outward signs of an inward grace even more perfect. She also 

445 



Madison C aw e i n 

was a poet and a wit, but she kept these talents in retirement, content 
with her husband's fame. Madison never asserted himself, and 
never, I think, doubted himself. There was something touching 
in the homage which he paid to his friend and neighbor, James Whit- 
comb Riley, the widely popular "Hoosier poet." Cawein never 
envied him, and never imitated him. He kept on his own way, 
grateful and loyal to his own delicate and lovely Muse, sure that his 
lips had tasted and drunken deep of the waters of the authentic, 
ancient, unfailing Pierian spring. 

I remember long walks with him through Kentucky woodlands, 
"where Nature has her way;" and on red roads which wound along 
the hillsides, giving far views over the blue landscape; and in the quiet 
paths of the unspoiled parks of Louisville. His eye was quick to 
welcome the greeting of each wildflower, his ear alert to recognize the 
call of redbird and mockingbird, warbler and thrush. 

I remember long talks in the cozy library in St. James Court, 
with Gertrude and Madison, when we recalled our best-loved poems 
of Keats and Shelley, Tennyson and Browning, and discussed amazing, 
unacademic theories of poetry and life. 

I remember the nodes Ambrosianae at the house of Dr. Cottell, 
when the Doctor recited Madison's strongest sonnets with con- 
vincing eloquence; and Madison, after much urging, repeated some 
of his latest f airy -verses ; and Gertrude sang old ballads with a voice 
to melt the heart. 

All this was poetry. And Madison lived in it. Now he is gone. 
And there is no one just like him left. 

Do you think he cares, in that new world, where the pure in 
heart walk by the crystal stream under the trees whose leaves never 
wither — do you think he cares whether or not men praise his verses 
written here? 

No, I do not think he cares. But I think it would be a great pity 
if we should forget what he did for poetry in America. There was an 
intimate realism in his verse that gave our own native trees and 
flowers a place on Parnassus. There was a deep human feeling in his 
heart that made romantic love a real factor in life. There was an 
Ariel spirit in his soul that wove the most delicate, realistic fairy-poems 
that America has known. 

His five volumes of collected verse are too long, too various to 
give a clear and vivid impression of what he essentially was. For 
that, there should be a single volume of selected poems, showing the 
rare qualities of his mind and art. This would be worthy to stand 
beside the Serious Poems of Thomas Hood, that true poet whom the 
English mistook for a jester. 

I do not think you can localize Cawein to Kentucky. But no 
one who reads him can fail to see that he lived and grew and loved 
there; and Kentucky may well be proud of him and cherish his fame 
as a true American poet. 

446 



Reminiscences 
By George Lee Burton 

Louisville, Kentucky 

Happy the man who has learned to value his friends for what 
they are, rather than deprecate them for what they are not. 

In thinking of Madison Cawein I seem to see a slight, rather 
short man, with homely face not calculated to attract attention — 
large nose, hazel eyes, slightly receding chin, with somewhat freckled 
skin glistening in places where tightly stretched over forehead and 
cheekbones. 

If you had heard some one say, "That is Madison Cawein, but 
he doesn't look like a poet," you would have considered his face more 
critically. 

You would have seen nothing to suggest the cheap conception of 
a languid-eyed, long-haired, pale-faced sentimentalist; but if you 
had looked deep enough into his eyes, you might have found there 
thoughtfulness and imagination, the gift of vision, of visualizing the 
unseen and non-existent; or you might have seen at least the steady 
quiet surface that indicated resourceful depths below. 

He had a simple unaffected manner, with utter absence of pose, 
that disarmed criticism of his rather precise way of speaking, a 
preciseness that was almost an accent. When with him, one felt his 
unfailing courtesy and kindliness in manner as well as speech, yet 
felt them subconsciously, so unobtrusive were they. Until after 
reflection, his virtues seemed partly negative. 

All men live upon mental and spiritual islands. Some, of restless 
or gregarious nature, are constantly putting off to visit other islands, 
enriching themselves by discoveries in human minds and souls, 
enriching others, getting, giving. 

Cawein seemed of the other type, one to remain on his own 
island and accept those who chanced to come, or who came in answer 
to the sound of his singing. A stranger might not think him dumb, 
wooden; but he had little small talk: and to know him you had to go 
to his common interest ground, or at least ask him over to yours, 
rather than expect him to take the initiative on things other than his 
work. 

I knew Madison Cawein for a great many years; and although 
we did not see much of each other, there was always between us a 
friendly interest and understanding. 

For many years prior to 1900 there was in Louisville a locally 
famous social and literary club known as The Blue Stocking Club. 
It was composed of men and women who met every two weeks, ex- 
cept in summer, at the homes of the ladies. At the meetings one 
man and one girl read each a carefully prepared paper, usually on 
related topics or on different phases of the same subject; general 

447 



Madison C aw e i 



n 



discussion of the papers, a social evening and refreshments followed. 
The Club took itself quite seriously, as it had a right to do, and was 
considered socially and mentally exclusive. 

Some eight or ten years after the publication of his first volume 
of poems, when many annual volumes had attracted attention at 
home and abroad and established his fame, Madison Cawein was 
invited to join this club. He accepted and was a member a short 
time. His recognition as a poet, rather than his social gifts and graces, 
caused him to be invited; but he was always gentlemanly in bearing, 
courteous and refined. He was apparently indifferent to social 
distinction, at least to any striving for it. 

It is not my purpose now to attempt to trace his development in 
his poetry, but it was interesting to me to watch for it in the new 
volumes. I always rejoiced to see verses carrying a more human 
note, a reflection of his view of the meaning of life, a note of greater 
sympathy with those struggling with life and its problems, mingled 
with songs of nature's color and beauty, and those woven with fancies 
of ethereal forest sprites. It was good to see the too great lusciousness 
of some of his early work toned down, and to see in him the thinker as 
well as the singer and the painter. 

On one occasion in telling me of The Shadow Garden and Other 
Plays before it was published — after he had sketched for me the 
phantasy, "The Shadow Garden," and the second play, "The House 
of Fear, A Mystery" — I remarked, 

"You couldn't have written that ten years ago." 

"No," he replied, looking at me thoughtfully. 

On December lo, 1909, there was given a reception to students 
in the Sunday School room and parlors of the Broadway Baptist 
Church, in Louisville, and it happened to fall to my lot to arrange 
the program. The students from the Southern Baptist Theological 
Seminary, and those from the Dental and Medical Colleges, were 
from twenty-five or thirty States, many of them being college men. 
We decided to have an Authors' Reading as the chief feature of the 
program, and I asked Madison Cawein to read for us. 

He was very nice about it, consented readily, and also readily 
agreed when I suggested that he let me select the poems to be read. 
I always felt his critical faculty was subordinate to his creative 
where his own work was concerned; but at any rate, I was supposed 
to know better the character and taste of his audience. 

When I suggested "Love and a Day" for one number, he re- 
marked, 

"John Peter Grant has set that to music, the second part of each 
stanza." 

"Why not get him to sing that?" I immediately suggested. 
"You read the first part of each stanza, then without announcement 



448 



Reminiscences 

look toward Mr. Grant who will stand near the piano where his 
accompanist will be seated, and have him sing the rest of the stanza; 
so with all three." 

Thus it was arranged and carried out, Mr. Grant graciously 
consenting. The effect was fine, and greatly appreciated by the 
audience. 

The slightly matter-of-fact voice of the reader as he gave the 
lines : 

In girandoles of gladioles 

The day had kindled flame; 
And Heaven a door of gold and pearl 
Unclosed when Morning — like a girl, 
A red rose twisted in a curl — 

Down sapphire stairways came, 

was contrasted sharply with the rich singing tones and the sustaining 
accompaniment as the soloist gave the next: 

Said I to Love: "What must I do? 
What shall I do? What can I do?" 
Said I to Love: "What must I do? 
All on a summer's morning." 

Said Love to me: "Go woo, go woo." 

Said Love to me: "Go woo. 
If she be milking, follow, O! 
And in the clover hollow, O! 
While through the dew the bells clang clear. 
Just whisper it into her ear, 

All on a summer's morning." 

Mr. Grant also sang effectively other songs, the music of which 
he had composed to words of Cawein's poems, among them being 
"Baby Mary" and "She Is So Much," from The Garden of Dreams. 

"Strollers" was another poem Cawein read that evening, and 
there were several selections from New Poems which had been pub- 
lished in England shortly before that time — among them "Dragon- 
Seed," "A Prayer for Old Age," and "A Song of the Road." 

He did not read especially well; there was an evenness of pitch 
and delivery that might have suggested the monotonous, except for 
the shortness of the different poems, and their varied subject matter 
and meter. But there were two poems in that reading which were 
exceptions, two from his other volume published that year. The Giant 
and The Star — being "Little Annals in Rhyme" dedicated to his 
then four-year-old son, Preston, whose name has since been legally 
changed to the Madison of his father. 

449 



Madison C aw e i n 

These poems were "Old Man Winter" and "Little Boy Sleepy," 
and he read them charmingly. He seemed to forget himself in their 
reading, his voice unbent, if I may use the term, lost its suggestion of 
tight precision; and he caught the spirit of the verses as if it had 
caught him. He gave them as he might really have given "Old 
Man Winter" to his little son, or might have told to sympathetic 
friends in the living-room, as he came smilingly down the stairs, 
just how little sleepy-head boy had gone to sleep, told them picturing 
it again to himself, unconscious of and not striving for any effect in 
the telling. I like to think of Madison Cawein as he read those 
poems; they suggest the intimate human touch of the best of his 
fatherhood. 

Some of the poems in the book do not seem so happy, so sponta- 
neous, do not wholly conform to childish thought and vocabulary; 
but these two are especially attractive, and as he read them, he gave 
the emphasis of their italicized words, the emphasis you felt he had 
felt as he composed them, as the verses had sung themselves to him. 

The whole reading was thoroughly enjoyed by the audience, and 
was an unqualified success. 

I asked him at that time to autograph for me my copy of New 
Poems, and he cheerfully did so, inscribing on the fly-leaf some lines 
of his own selection, a stanza from the proem of the book, "Hesperian," 
namely: 

The path that winds by wood and stream 
Is not the path for me to-day; 
The path I take is one of dream, 
That leads me down a twilight way. 

One does not set up memory signals at the ordinary interviews 
he has with his friends, and in glancing back through the years only 
snatches of chance conversation come back to me. 

I remember on one occasion Miss Mildred J. Hill, the cornposer, 
asked me to get for her a copy of a certain poem by Cawein which she 
wished to set to music. I did so, making the trip one afternoon to 
his home, a substantial brick house at the corner of Nineteenth and 
Market streets where he was then living with his mother. I was 
shown into the back parlor, well furnished in conventional walnut 
style, with sunny west windows; and there as we chatted, he sat at 
his desk and gladly copied the poem. 

Perhaps it was then, perhaps on another occasion, I spoke of a 
wealth of color he had splashed across the page in one of his poems, 
the setting being a castle wall, and asked him where he had gotten it, 
what had suggested it. 

"Why, I got that from an old vine-covered wall at Copley 
Square in Boston, one autumn when I was there," he said. It was 

450 



Reminiscences 

an instance that showed how a writer builds the unknown from the 
known, fashions an ideal out of scraps and shreds of experience. 

Cawein impressed me with his familiarity with the work of the 
modern poets, and he had words of praise for many things they had 
done. I shall never think of Francis Thompson's "The Hound of 
Heaven" without thinking of Cawein; it is a great poem to which he 
introduced me. He was enthusiastic about it, reciting parts of it, 
and making me feel its greatness and his appreciation of it: yet I 
have the impression that the dramatic feeling of the poem appealed 
to him rather than the sentiment of God's love, or that he regarded 
the great pursuing love of God as a possible thing rather than as a 
possible comfort. 

But after all, who knows? Who knows what glimpses of beauty 
and greatness came to him at times, even more than he accepted and 
wrote. He may have missed much, but he attained much, accom- 
plished much. Let us be grateful for all that was fine and great in 
his work, and all that was kindly and true in his life. 



By Henry H. Koehler, M. D. 

Louisville, Kentucky 

My earliest recollections of Madison Cawein date back to our 
high school days. He was a year in advance of me, and I recall 
seeing him usually at recess either reading or talking with the teachers 
or some of his classmates. He seldom played, and in those days 
there was an air of aloofness about him which we younger boys felt 
and often resented, attributing it to pride and conceit. We were, 
however, badly at fault, for a few years later when I became well 
acquainted with him I found that I had been mistaken in my early 
impressions. I soon discovered in him one of the kindest and most 
unpretentious of men. He was always more or less diffident, and, as 
a result, those who saw little of him did not receive a correct impres- 
sion of his real personality. 

Shortly after his parents moved to Nineteenth and Market 
streets Cawein played a flute, and I remember hearing him sitting 
under the grape arbor making desperate attempts to play sorne of 
the simpler airs. The neighbors seemed relieved when he admitted 
his failure as a flutist. In later years when I reminded him of these 
ejfiforts, he remarked with a smile that the flute always appealed to 
him and that its music had often served as a medium of inspiration. 

Soon after finishing high school be became assistant cashier in 
the Newmarket pool room, a widely known betting establishment on 
Third Street. This gambling place, and others like its neighbor, 
the Turf Exchange, operated under a license and conducted what was 

451 



Madison C a w e i n 

then a legalized business. Among their patrons were prominent and 
substantial men of Louisville and the South. All of the betting was 
on horse races. Many men are still living whose winning tickets were 
cashed by him during the five or six years he was employed there. 
He was kept very busy and I recall watching with admiration and 
surprise the deftness with which he handled tickets and money. I 
had an impression that he added his figures two columns at a time — • 
in tens instead of units. One day in talking over former times, I asked 
him whether or not my recollection on that point was correct, 
and he answered, "Why, yes, I was obliged to add very rapidly, and 
discovered to my surprise that, after some practice, I could add in 
tens as easily as in units. I have never been interested in mathematics 
in any form, and I suppose this was a case of necessity being the dis- 
coverer of ability." 

While connected with the Newmarket the human instinct for 
taking a chance was, it seems, latent within him, but developed 
slowly and did not find expression until after he had left the pool room 
and had taken up literature as a profession. The temptation to 
add to his income by stock gambling is explainable — and not alto- 
gether without justification — as his poetry yielded him on an average 
only about fifteen hundred dollars a year, a sum insufficient to sup- 
port a striving poet with many expenses. Good luck, it seems, was 
kind to him for a long period, and for twenty years he walked arm in 
arm with the goddess of chance who smiled upon him in such ventures 
and other speculative enterprises. He had no sound judgment, 
however, based upon accurate knowledge of stocks and bonds, and 
was equally susceptible to both good and bad advice. About three 
years before his death fickle fortune finally deserted him, and within 
about a year he suffered considerable losses and was brought to the 
verge of bankruptcy. He later told me that one of his last deals 
represented a loss of about twelve thousand dollars. 

During his first years at high school he was a fairly good-looking 
boy and seemingly in good health, but never robust. Soon there- 
after he began to look older than most boys of his age. His eyes 
revealed the fact that he was a dreamer, and his speech and actions 
were like those of a much older man. Early in manhood his arterial 
system reached a point of degeneration that is usually delayed until 
middle life. At forty he looked like a man of about fifty years, and 
when he died, aged forty-nine, he looked at least sixty. 

Mr. Cawein as boy and man was always appreciative of feminine 
beauty. He sought and enjoyed the company of intelligent men and 
women, especially those who were interested in literature, and among 
that class he came to have many friends. 

One day in discussing the subjects of a possible hereafter and 
so-called spiritualism, he expressed himself as convinced that dis- 
carnate spirits return and at times control human activities by both 

452 



Reminiscences 

good and bad influences. He asserted that he frequently experienced 
a strange dis-association of personahty by feeling the presence of 
another self at his side. 

He was very devoted to his wife, who was the inspiration of 
many of his poems. She read every one he wrote, but as a rule not 
until after it had been finally corrected or printed. 

Mrs. Cawein was a beautiful woman of charming personality 
and an accomplished musician. She was blessed with an unusual 
sense of humor of the gay Hibernian type, a quality almost entirely 
lacking in her husband. She was interested in society, but he was not. 
To please her, however, he accompanied her to many social functions. 
She realized, but he did not, that he worked too hard and worried 
too much and that an occasional relaxation in the form of society life 
would be beneficial to him. 

Cawein was a very appreciative man. I shall tell of a suggestion 
I made for which he thanked me many times. He was familiar with 
Goethe, Schiller and Heine in the original. We were both admirers 
of their works and often discussed them. During one of these dis- 
cussions I called his attention to Nicholaus Lenau, and a few days 
later gave him a copy of this German nature poet's works. Not 
until then had he read anything by this author. The book pleased 
him exceedingly and he immediately began translating some of the 
poems. In the course of a few years he translated over a hundred. 
He read many, if not all of them, to me, a few every month. Every 
reading was preceded and followed by a profusion of thanks to me 
for having called his attention to Lenau. I might add that shortly 
before he died he submitted the translations to some Eastern pub- 
lishers, all of whom rejected the manuscript. The war in Europe had 
started and German works were not in demand. Mr. Rothert 
informs me that he has tried to locate this manuscript but has not 
succeeded. 

I accompanied him to the country a number of times. On one 
occasion my brother. Dr. F. W. Koehler, who was our host, the poet, 
Mr. Graham Macfarlane, Stuart McKnight and I drove up into 
Harrod's Creek country, a region Cawein dearly loved. It was a 
late spring afternoon. On our return we stopped in front of a well 
kept garden filled with blooming hollyhocks and other flowers that 
go to make an old fashioned garden. It was a beautiful spot. Cawein 
seemed lost in rapture and, among other things, incidentally comment- 
ed on the fact that an old man was sitting at a window on the other 
side of the garden. We felt that the poet saw far more than the 
actual view that lay before our eyes. I wondered at the time if in 
that lovely scene Mr. Cawein had not discovered inspiration for 
another nature poem, and was not surprised when a few months later 
he showed me the result of his meditations. He pictured the whole 
scene, the garden and the old man at the window and had inter- 

453 



Madison C aw e i n 

preted them as none but a true poet could. The poem is entitled 
"Service." It was published in a magazine and shortly thereafter 
reprinted in his Minions of the Moon. 

During the last year or two of his life, Judge David W. Fair- 
leigh, Captain Nathan J. Shelton and I frequently met him at the 
Pendennis Club. We had many interesting chats; Cawein did very 
little of the talking, but was always an attentive listener. One day 
he stated that he had asked for an appointment as a Government 
representative to some foreign country and had designated Bermuda 
as his preference. Subsequently he informed us that he had with- 
drawn his application, as he feared such a position would not net him 
enough money to justify accepting it. On several occasions he had 
told us, but in a somewhat casual manner, that his finances had gone 
from bad to worse and that his poetry was not paying him sufficient 
to maintain him and that it had therefore become necessary for him 
to find a position by which he could add to his income. He did not 
explain that he was on the verge of bankruptcy. Mr. Fairleigh was 
then president of the Board of Trustees of the University of Louisville. 
He grasped the situation and conceived a plan to create a new chair 
in the University for Mr. Cawein. He thought that by placing a 
widely known literary man on the faculty, the University would not 
only be greatly honored, but also the poet would be securing an income 
he justly deserved. The available funds of the University were not 
sufficient for the proposed Chair, however, and the Board then de- 
cided to establish an endowed Chair of Poetry that was to pay Cawein 
$i,8oo a year. The Trustees took up the subject at once, intending 
to keep it sub rosa until the completion of the plans, and then surprise 
Cawein with the offer. The endowment fund was well under way 
when he died, and in all probability he never heard of the Chair 
of Poetry intended for him as an evidence of appreciation of his 
literary work. 

Madison Cawein had a good and kind heart, and spent his life 
promoting the poetry of others and unselfishly writing poems for 
his own and future generations. He fills a self-carved niche. His 
success or failure in things material is of little or no consequence. 
The fact that his contemporaries recognized him as one of the greatest 
of American poets is a step toward an enduring fame. Will Madison 
Cawein be forgotten? I do not think so. 



454 



APPENDIX 

A. List of Cawein's Books 

B. Index to Poems in Cawein's Books 

C. Bibliographical References 



455 



A. 

LIST OF BOOKS AND BROCHURES AND PROSE 
SKETCHES BY MADISON CAWEIN 

First Book 

»/ „ 
Blooms of the Berry. Louisville, John P. Morton & Company, 
1887. 202 pages, 500 copies. 

Second Book 

The Triumph of Music and other Lyrics. Louisville, John P. 
Morton & Company, 1888. 171 pages, 500 copies. 

Inscribed to William Dean Howells with Friendship and Esteem. 

Third Book 

AccoLON OF Gaul, with other Poems. Louisville, John P. Morton 
& Company, 1889. 164 pages, 500 copies. 

With all My Heart to Lilian and Rose [sister and cousin]. 



t/l 



Fourth Book 



Lyrics and Idyls. Louisville, John P. Morton & Company, 1890. 
194 pages, 500 copies. 

To James Lane Allen and Robert Burns Wilson, with Regards 
and Appreciation for the High Standard of Beauty, the Excellency 
of their Work, Prose and Poetical, has given to Southern Literature. 

Fifth Book 

^ Days and Dreams, Poems. New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1891. 
173 pages, 500 copies. 

To James Whitcomb Riley with Admiration and Regard. 

457 



Madison C aw e i n 

Sixth Book 

V Moods and Memories, Poems. New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 

1892. 310 pages, 250 copies. 

To William Dean Howells with Friendship and Esteem. 

Frontispiece, by F. W. Cawein. 

The poems of the present volume have been selected from the 
earlier books of the author, Blooms of the Berry and The Triumph of 
Music. Some of the verses retained have been altered or revised to 
a greater or less extent. To these have been added several hitherto 
unpublished pieces. M. C. 

I Seventh Book 

Red Leaves and Roses, Poems. New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 

1893. 205 pages, 500 copies. 

To My Mother. 

Eight Book 

Poems of Nature and Love. New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 
^ 1893. 211 pages, 250 copies. 

To Joaquin Miller. 

Publisher's Note: Under the present title are included selec- 
tions from two former volumes, Accolon of Gaul, and Lyrics and 
Idyls. Such poems only as appeared to the author's judgment 
worthiest of retention have been retained. In the selection of these 
he has endeavored to exercise a critical discrimination and, to the 
best of his ability, to correct or expunge the frequent obscurity, 
superfluity, and exaggerated expression of the earlier works. Many 
of the poems have been partially, several entirely, rewritten. 

Ninth Book 

X Intimations of the Beautiful and other Poems. New York, 
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1894. 208 pages, 350 copies. 

To the Author of God in His World, with Profound Admiration. 
[To Henry Mills Alden]. 

Tenth Book 



V 



The White Snake and other Poems. Translated From the Ger- 
man Into the Original Meters. Louisville, John P. Morton & 
Company, 1895. 79 pages, portrait, 150 copies. 

458 



C a w e i n' s Books 

In translating the following poems from the German, I have 
retained, as closely as possible, the form, meter, and rhyme of the 
original. But as there are in all languages idiomatic phrases and 
words expressing untranslatable shades of meaning; and frequent 
passages, which, when brought over literally into another language, 
make the merest rhymed prose; I have permitted myself the liberty, 
in such instances, of translating the general impression made upon 
me by the thought, rather than its literal meaning. So far as I am 
aware many of the poems herewith presented are translated into 
English now for the first time. [Thirty-two poems translated from 
Geibel, Uhland, Heine, Mirza-Shafify and Goethe.] — M. C. 



Eleventh Book 

^CFndertones. Boston, Copeland & Day, 1896. 65 pages, 550 copies. 
Inscribed to the Pathetic Memory of the Poet, Henry Timrod. 



i. 



Twelfth Book 



The Garden of Dreams. Louisville, John P. Morton & Company, 
1896. 123 pages, 500 copies. 

To My Brothers. 

Thirteenth Book 

Shapes and Shadows, Poems. New York, R. H. Russell, 1898. 
77 pages, 800 copies. 

To Harrison S. Morris. 

Fourteenth Book 

^ Idyllic Monologues, Old and New World Verses. Louisville, 
John P. Morton & Company, 1898. 106 pages, 250 copies. 

To My Friend, R. E. Lee Gibson. 

Fifteenth Book 

^Myth and Romance, A Book of Verses. New York, G. P. 
Putnam's Sons, 1899. 85 pages, 500 copies. 

To My Friend, William Warwick Thum. 

459 



Madison C aw e i n 

Sixteenth Book 

One Day and Another, a Lyrical Eclogue. Boston, Richard 
G. Badger & Company, 1901. 108 pages, 500 copies. 

To G. F. M. [Gertrude Foster McKelvey] This Volume is In- 
scribed in Memory of Many Days. 

The poem herewith presented was first published some ten years 
ago in a volume entitled Days and Dreams. The original verses have 
been rewritten throughout and extensively added to, making it 
comparatively a new poem. M. C. 

Seventeenth Book 

Weeds by the Wall. Louisville, John P. Morton & Company, 
1901. 94 pages, 500. copies. 

To Dr. Henry A. Cottell, whose Kind Words of Friendship and 
Approval have Encouraged Me when I Most Needed Encouragement. 

Eighteenth Book 

V Kentucky Poems. With an Introduction by Edmund Gosse. 

London, Grant Richards, 1902. 264 pages, 500+500 copies. 
New York, E. P. Dutton & Company, 1902, 1903. 264 pages, 
500 copies. 

The poems included in this volume have been selected from the 
following volumes of the author: Moods and Memories, Red Leaves 
and Roses, Poems of Nature and Love, Intimations of the Beautiful, 
Days and Dreams, Undertones, Idyllic Monologues, The Garden of 
Dreams, Shapes and Shadows, Myth and Romance, and Weeds by the 
Wall. None of the longer poems has been included in this selection. 
M. C. 

Nineteenth Book 

V A Voice on the Wind and other Poems. Louisville, John P. Mor- 

ton & Company, 1902. 73 pages, 500 copies. 

Inscribed to Edmund Gosse as a Slight Token of Appreciation 
and Esteem. 

Twentieth Book 

V The Vale of Tempe, Poems. New York, E. P. Dutton & Com- 

pany, 1905. 274 pages, 600 copies. 

To Gertrude [Mrs. Madison Cawein]. 

[A second issue appeared in 191 1, containing table of contents 
not in the 1905 orint.] 

460 



C aw e i n' s Books 

Twenty-first Book 

^4»Tature Notes and Impressions in Prose and Verse. New 
York, E. P. Dutton & Company, 1906. 311 pages, 300 copies. 

To the Memory of George H. Ellwanger, True Friend and Lover 
and Interpreter of Nature, as a Slight Token of Esteem and Admira- 
tion. 

With few if any changes the contents of this volume, both prose 
and verse, with the exception of the short sketch at the end and one 
or two of the poems, have been copied almost word for word from 
my note-books of many years. They are impressions, ideas, fancies, 
more or less fragmentary, that struck me at the moment; notes, 
suggestions, what you will, jotted down hurriedly — sometimes taking 
the form of prose, other times that of verse as the fancy moved me, 
while wandering in the woods at all seasons, making a record of days 
extending over a period of some twenty odd years. All the verses 
and prose-notes contained in the first part, "1883-1886," were written 
while hardly more than a boy, between the ages of eighteen and 
twenty-one and while attending high school. — Madison Cawein. 

Contents: Part I. Nature Notes and Impressions [prose and 
verse]: 1883-1886, 1887-1890, 1891-1900, 1901-1905. Part II. 
Poems [fifteen]. Part III. A Prose Sketch: Woman or — What? 

Twenty-second Book 

Volume I. The Poems of Madison Cawein. Lyrics and Old 
World Idylls. 

To William Dean Howells Who was the First to Recognize and 
Encourage My Endeavors, this Volume is Inscribed with Affection, 
Admiration and Esteem. 

This is the first of the Five Volumes of The Poems of Madison 
Cawein. It contains an Introduction by Edmund Gosse — a reprint 
of his Introduction to Kentucky Poems. The Five Volumes are illus- 
trated with seventeen photogravures after paintings by Eric Pape. 
Each volume consists of about 485 pages. The first sets of the 
edition bear the imprint of The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indian- 
apolis, and the others Small, Maynard & Company, Boston. 
Published 1907. 250 sets. o. a. r. 

Preface: This first collected edition of my poems contains all 
the verses I care to retain except the translations from the German, 
published in 1895 under the title of The White Snake, and some of 
the poems in Nature Notes and Impressions, published in 1906. Sev- 
eral of the poems which I probably would have omitted I have retained 

461 



Madison C aw e i n 

at the solicitation of friends, who have based their argument for their 
retention upon the generally admitted fact that a poet seldom knows 
his best work. The new arrangement under new titles I found was 
necessary for the sake of convenience; and the poems in a manner 
grouped themselves in certain classes. In eliminating the old titles — 
some eighteen in number — I have disregarded entirely, except in the 
case of the first volume, the date of the appearance of each poem, 
placing every one, according to its subject matter, in its proper group 
under its corresponding title. Most of the poems, especially the 
earHer ones, have been revised; many of them almost entirely re- 
written and, I think, improved. — Madison Cawein. 

Twenty-third Book 

Volume II. The Poems of Madison Cawein. New World Idylls 
and Poems of Love. 

With Enduring Friendship, Love and Loyalty to James Whit- 
comb Riley. 

Twenty-fourth Book 

Volume III. The Poems of Madison Cawein. Nature Poems. 

To Dr. Henry A. Cottell whose Kind Words of Friendship and 
Approval have Encouraged Me when I Most needed Encouragement. 

Twenty-fifth Book 

Volume IV. The Poems of Madison Cawein. Poems of Mystery 
and of Myth and Romance. 

To My Mother. 

Twenty-sixth Book 

Volume V. The Poems of Madison Cawein. Poems of Medita- 
tion and of Forest and Field. 

To My Wife who has been the Inspiration of Many of My Poems. 

Twenty-seventh Book 

An Ode. Read August 15, 1907, at the Dedication of the Monument 
Erected at Gloucester, Massachusetts, in Cornmemoration of the 
Founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the Year 1623. 
Louisville, John P. Morton & Company, 1908. 25 pages, 250 
copies. 

Contents: I. An Ode. II. On Old Cape Ann — [Seven sonnets]. 

462 



C aw e i n^ s Books 

Twenty-eight Book 
V'New Poems. London, Grant Richards, 1909. 248 pages, 500 copies. 

Twenty-ninth Book 

.^ The Giant and the Star, Little Annals in Rhyme. Boston, 
Small, Maynard & Company, 1909. 173 pages, 1,000 copies. 

To My Little Son, Preston. 

Thirtieth Book 

The Shadow Garden and Other Plays. New York, G. P. Put- 
nam's Sons, 1910. 259 pages, 500 copies. 

To Eric Pape, True Friend and Artist. 

Contents: The Shadow Garden, a Phantasy. The House of 
Fear, a Mystery. The Witch, a Miracle. Cabestaing, a Tragedy 
in Three Acts. 

Thirty-first Book 

Poems by Madison Cawein. Selected by the Author. With a 
Foreword by William Dean Howells. New York, The Mac- 
millan Company, 1911. 298 pages, 1,300 copies. 

Publisher's Note [in part]: The verses composing this volume 
have been selected by the author almost entirely from the five-vol- 
ume edition of his poems published in 1907. A number have been 
included from the three or four volumes which have been published 
since the appearance of the Collected Poems, namely, three poems 
from the volume entitled 'Nature Notes and Impressions, one poem 
from The Giant and the Star, Section VII and part of Section VIII 
oi An Ode written in commemoration of the founding of the Massa- 
chusetts Bay Colony, some five or six poems from New Poems, and 
three or four selections from the volume of selections entitled 
Kentucky Poems. The two poems "In Arcady" and "The Black 
Knight" are new and are published here for the first time. 

In making the selections for the present book Mr. Cawein has 
endeavored to cover the entire field of his poetical labors which extends 
over a quarter of a century. With the exception of his dramatic 
work, as witnessed by one volume only, The Shadow Garden, a 
book of plays four in number, published in 1910, the selection here- 
with presented by us is, in our opinion, representative of the author's 
poetical work. 

463 



i' 



Madison C aw e i n 

/ Thirty-second Book 

The Poet, the Fool and the Faeries. Boston, Small, Maynard 
& Company, 1912. 259 pages, 1,000 copies. 

To Alice Monroe Pape, Gifted and Beautiful. 

Thirty-third Book 

\jThe Republic, a Little Book of Homespun Verse. Cincinnati, 
Stewart & Kidd Company, 1913. 98 pages, 1,000 copies. 

To Dr. Henry Van Dyke, whose work both in Prose and in 
Poetry has done so much to sustain the High Standard of American 
Literature during the past quarter of a century. 

Thirty-fourth Book 

Minions of the Moon, a Little Book of Song and Story. 
Cincinnati, Stewart & Kidd Company, 1913, 131 pages, seven 
illustrations, 1,000 copies. 

To All Children, Big and Little, who have ever Believed or still 
Believe in Faeries, I Dedicate this Little Book, that Attempts to set 
forth in Words all that such a Belief may mean to the Soul of Man. 

Thirty-fifth Book 

vThe Poet and Nature and the Morning Road. Introduction 
by the Author. Louisville, John P. Morton & Company, 1914. 
241 pages, 1,500 copies. 

To John Burroughs, Naturalist, Poet and Philosopher, with the 
Greatest Admiration for the Work he has done and is still doing 
for the True and the Beautiful. 

The poems in the first part. The Poet and Nature, are selected 
from some of the previous books. * * * j-^g Morning Road 
consists of recent poems now published in book form for the first 
time. * * * * — Madison Cawein. 

Note by o. A. R.: Many of the selections in The Poet and Nature 
are reprinted without their titles. The following table, heretofore not 
published, gives all the titles and also the pages on which the poems 
occur in this book. 

Chapter i — The Babbits: The Creek Road, 3; The Covered 
Bridge, 5; The Old Barn, 6; The Ruined Mill, 10; Abandoned, 14; 
Evening on the Farm, 18; Whippoorwill Time, 21. 

464 



C aw e i n' s Books 

Chapter 2 — The Poet: Enchanted Ground, 26; At the Lane's 
End, Part 3, 29; The Mood of the Earth, 33; The Tavern of the Bees, 
36; Where the Path Leads, 39; I Sat with Woodland Dreams, 42; Owl's 
Roost, 46; It Was Among These Very Woods, 49; A Path to the 
Woods, 52; The Rain-Crow, 56; Rain, 59; The Tree Toad, 61. 

Chapter 3 — The Garden: Old Homes, 65; An Elf There Is, 
67; The Morning Glories, 69; The Chipmunk, 73; The Grass- 
hopper, 75; The Catbird, 77; The Redbird, 79; A Boy's Heart, 84; 
Content, 88; The Owlet, 91 ; Witchery, 93. 

Chapter 4 — The Book: Hesperian, 99; Forest Way, 100; The 
Forest Spring, 103; Consecration, 104; The Wood Witch, 106; A 
Midsummer Day, 108; The Wood-Thrush, 109; A Fallen Beech, 112; 
Midsummer, 116; Garden Gossip, 119; Rain in the Woods, 122; Pro- 
logue to Kentucky Poems, 125; When Things Go Wrong, 128. 

Chapter 5 — The Note-Book: Poetry on pages 134-138 is from 
Nature Notes and Impressions, pages: 81, 96, 98, 173, 185 and 191. 
The Wood Thrush, 143; Catkins, 147; Dragonflies, 152; Broken 
Drouth, 155; The Climbing Cricket, 158. Prose quoted on pages 
131-139 is from Nature Notes and Impressions pages: 67, 72, 184, 227 
and 243. 

Chapter 6 — Homeward Bound : The Oversoul, 162, 

Note by o. a. r.: The second part of this book. The Morning 
Road, contains fifty-two new poems, each with its title. 

Thirty-sixth Book 

^ The Cup of Comus; Fact and Fancy. New York, The Cameo 
Press, 1915. 96 pages, 500+500 copies. 

Friendship Edition. Foreword by Rose de Vaux-Royer. In- 
troductory Poems: To My Good Friend W. T. H. Howe, by Madison 
Cawein; Threnody in May, In Memory of Madison Cawein, by 
Clinton Scollard; Broken Music, In Memoriam, by Rose de Vaux- 
Royer; Madison Cawein, 1 865-1914, by Margaret Steele Anderson. 

Contents: Fifty-five poems by Madison Cawein, most of which 
appeared in recent magazines and periodicals. 

Brochures 



J 



Let Us Do the Best that We Can. Chicago, P. F. Volland & 
Company, 1909. 6 pages. 

So Many Ways. Chicago, P. F. Volland & Company, 1911. 6 
pages. 

465 



/ Madison C aw e i n 

^ The Message of the Lilies, Chicago, P. F. Volland & Company, 
1913. 8 pages. 

Christmas Rose and Leaf. New York, The Forest Craft Guild, 
1913. 4 pages. 

Whatever the Path. New York, The Forest Craft Guild, 1913. 

4 pages. 
The Days of Used to Be. New York, The Forest Craft Guild, 1913. 

4 pages. 

Cards 

Six decorated cards, each about fifty words: The Dawn, Happy New 
Year, and Christmas Greeting to You, printed by P. F. Volland 
& Company; Christmas Bells, Christmas Letter, and The Christ- 
mas Hearth, printed by John P. Morton & Company. 1911-1913. 

Calendar for 1912. Four hand-colored panels; each a landscape 
and five lines of verse. P. F. Volland & Company. 

Prose Sketches 

Paul Herancour's Sacrifice. The Current, Chicago, July 24, 
1886. 

His Legacy. Fetter's Southern Magazine, Louisville, June, 1893. 

Prose-Notes in Nature Notes andlmpressions. 1906. 

Woman or — What? Nature Notes and Impressions. 1906. 

Introduction to The Book of Love, a book of prose and verse, compiled 
by Jessie Reid. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1911. 

Dialogues connecting the poems in The Poet and Nature. 1914. 

The House of Shadows. John P. Morton & Company's Western 
Farmers' Almanac, Louisville, 1915. 

Poetry and The Public, and six other sketches. See this volume, 
Chapter X, pages 340-353. 



All preceding items are now out of print, except the following 
books of which their publishers have on hand only a few copies: 
Blooms of the Berry; The Triumph of Music; Accolon of Gaul; The 
Vale of Tempe; Nature Notes and Impressions; The Poems of Madison 
Cawein (in five volumes) ; Poems; The Republic; Minions of The Moon; 
The Poet and Nature and The Morning Road; and The Cup of Comus. 

466 



B. 

INDEX TO POEMS IN CAWEIN'S BOOKS 

Nothing has been found among the Cawein papers to indicate 
that the poet kept a special record to serve as a memorandum of the 
titles he had used. A paragraph devoted to the number of poems 
published in his books appears on page 68 of this volume and is here 
repeated : 

The thirty-six books by Madison Cawein contain about 2700 
poems; about 1500 are distinct originals and about 1200 are either 
unchanged reprints or changed versions. His original versions com- 
prise the greater part of twenty-five books. The Poems of Madison 
Cawein, in five large volumes, is a Compilation of his poems — in the 
original or in a new version — written before 1907. Six books consist 
chiefly of Selections he made from previous volumes. The Com- 
pilation and the various Selections cause many of his poems — some 
in the original, others in a changed version — to appear two or more 
times. 

Cawein's books contain practically all the poems he published 
in newspapers and magazines. Poems not printed in any of his 
books are not cited in this index. Titles are not given in their original 
form if changed after having appeared in newspapers or magazines, 
where the poems were first published. Of the many short lyrics 
that occur in the long poems only those few to which titles were 
given are here noted; no attempt is made to cite the others by their 
first lines. Titles grouped under one head refer to the same poem, 
reprinted without a change or with few or many changes. This 
index includes all the titles used in the books; but in its grouping of 
different versions and changed titles it is complete only to the extent 
of my present familiarity with the poems. 

467 



Madison C aw e i n 

The light figures refer to the pages; the heavy ones to the books, 
numbered as follows: 

1 Blooms of the Berry. 202 pages 

2 The Triumph of Music. 171 pages 

3 AccoLON OF Gaul. 164 pages 

4 Lyrics and Idyls. 194 pages 

5 Days and Dreams, i 73 pages 

6 Moods and Memories. 310 pages 

7 Red Leaves and Roses. 205 pages 

8 Poems of Nature and Love. 211 pages 

9 Intimations of the Beautiful. 208 pages 

10 The White Snake. 79 pages 

11 Undertones. 65 pages 

12 The Garden of Dreams. 123 pages 

13 Shapes and Shadows. 77 pages 

14 Idyllic Monologues. 106 pages 

15 Myth and Romance. 85 pages 

16 One Day and Another. 108 pages 

17 Weeds by the Wall. 94 pages 

18 Kentucky Poems. 264 pages 

19 A Voice on the Wind. 73 pages 

20 The Vale of Tempe. 274 pages 

21 Nature Notes and Impressions. 311 pages 

22 Volume I, The Poems of Madison Cawein. 493 pages. . 

23 Volume II, The Poems of Madison Cawein. 530 pages. . 

24 Volume III, The Poems of Madison Cawein. 483 pages. . 

25 Volume IV, The Poems of Madison Cawein. 439 pages . . 

26 Volume V, The Poems of Madison Cawein. 482 pages . . 

27 Ode. . . . Massachusetts Bay Colony. 25 pages 

28 New Poems. 248 pages 

29 The Giant and the Star. 173 pages 

30 The Shadow Garden and Other Plays. 259 pages 

31 Poems By Madison Cawein. 298 pages 

32 The Poet, the Fool and the Faeries. 259 pages 

33 The Republic. 98 pages 

34 Minions of the Moon. 131 pages 

35 The Poet and Nature and the Morning Road. 241 pages. 

36 The Cup of Comus. 96 pages 



468 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Abandoned, 12, i8;24, 233; 31, 288; 35, 14. 

Abandoned Quarry, An, 28, 166. 

Above the Hills, 35, 211. 

Above the Vales, 12, 109; 26, 220. 

Accolon of Gaul, 3, i ; 8, 156; 22, 219. 

Accomplishment, 33, 22. 

Achievement, 20, 242; 26, 381. 

Act III; see Revisited. 

Address to Night, An, 1, 106; 6, 74; Night, 18, 28; 24, 47. 

Adventurers, 7, 179; 18, 258; 24, 457. 

Adversity, 33, 76. 

After a Night of Rain, 28, 224. 

After Autumn Rain, 28, no. 

After Death, 32, 158. 

After Death; see Revealment. 

After Long Grief; see After Long Grief and Pain. 

After Long Grief and Pain, 13, 26; 24, 171 ; After Long Grief, 31, 289. 

After Rain, 7, 202; 18, 43; 24, 308. 

After Storm, 20, 192; 26, 445. 

After the Tournament, 4, 59; 8, 58; 22, 340. 

Afternoon, 21, 269. 

Afterword; see Preludes and Epilogues. 

Age, 32, 142. 

Age of Gold, The, 17, 51 ; 24, 313; 31, 243. 

Airy Tongues, 12, 11; 24, 184. 

Alcalde's Daughter, The, 5, 140; 22, 187. 

Alchemy, 8, 93; 26, 258. 

Aldrich, On the Death of, 32, 252. 

Allurement, 19, 72; 24, 422. 

Along the Ohio, 1, 73; 6, 79; 18, 58; 24, 56. 

Along the Stream, 17, 8; 24, 275. 

Amadis and Oriana; see Beltenebros at Miraflores. 

Amadis at Miraflores; see Beltenebros at Miraflores. 

Ambition, 12, 118; 24, 243. 

America, 7, 182; 26, 271. 

American Cuckoo, The, 35, 199. 

Among the Acres of the Wood, 4, 61 ; 8, 27; 23, 343. 

Among the Knobs, 4, 90; 8, 33; 24, 124. 

Analogies, 9, 146; 26, loi. 

Andalia, 4, 38; 8, 72; Andalia and the Springtime, 23, 304. 

Andalia and the Springtime; see Andalia. 

Anemone, An, 3, 88; To a Windflower, 15, 53; 26, 168; 31, 106. 

Angel with the Book, The, 28, 16. 

Annisquam, 27, 19. 

A. D. Nineteen Hundred, 17, 81 ; 24, 479. 

Announcement, 21, 258. 

469 



Madison C aw e i n 

Answered, 12, 93; 26, 201. 

Anthem of Dawn, 3, 150; 15, 13; 18, 130; 24, 331. See Chords. 

Anticipation, 1, 12; 6, 16; March and May, 23, 486. 

Antique, An, 1, 93; ^^ 121 ; 22, 129. 

Apart, 11, 44; 23, 356. 

Ape, The, 28, 231. 

Aphrodite, 1, 126; 25, 248. 

Apocalypse, 4, 102; 8, 48; 23, 327; 31, 20. 

Apollo, 9, 192; 25, 269. 

Apparition, The ; see War-Time Silhouettes. 

Apportionment, 17, 60; 24, 325. 

Apportionment; see Resignation. 

Aprilian, 28, 44. 

Arabah, 9, 141 ; 22, 458. 

Arcanna, 12, 15; 24, 236. 

Argonauts, 9, 98 ; 26, 88 ; 31, 206. 

Art, 13, 43; A Phantasy, 26, 228. 

Artemis, 2, 1 12 ; 6, 299 ; 25,244. 

Artist, The, 14, 103; 24, 347. 

As It is, 4, 56; 8, 85; Problems, 26, 130; 31, 105. 

As to a Nymph, 3, 154, See Chords. 

AshlyMere, 12, 87:25,92. 

Aspiration, 1, 17; 26, 249. 

Ass, The, 28, 236. 

Assumption, 9, 162 ; 26, 105 ; 31, 99. 

At Dawn, 13, 29; 25, 84. 

At Her Grave, 23, 386. 

At Last, 11, 26; 26, 119. 

At Midnight, 17, 65; 25, 118. 

At Moonrise, 20, 244; 26, 375. 

At Nineveh, 4, 189; 14, 70; 23, 476. 

At Parting, 13, 55; 23, 509. 

At Rest; see From Unbelief to Belief. 

At the Corregidor's, 5, 142; 22, 437. 

At the End of the Road, 36, 20. 

At the Fall of Dew, 34, 88. 

At the Ferry, 13, 50; Shadows on the Shore, 34, 120. 

At the Lane's End, 7, 93; 18, 134; 24, 334; 35, 29. 

At the Sign of the Skull, 17, 62 ; 25, 416. 

At the Stile, 5, 138; 23, 288. 

At Sunset, 11, 16; 18, 192; 23, 405; 31, 184. 

At Twenty-One, 12, 43; 23, 351. 

At Twilight, 9, 94 ; 23, 391 . 

At Vespers, 12, 91 ; 25, 438. 

Attainment, 32, 258. 

Attributes, 28, 98. 

470 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Aubade, 20, 236; 26, 371 ; 31, 18. 
August, 13, 2; 18, 168; 24, 423. 
Aurora, The, 28, 164. 
Authorities, 20, 271 ; 26, 421. 
Autumn, 35, 173. 
Autumn; see To Autumn. 
Autumn at Annisquam, 28, 162. 
Autumn Equinox, 35, 217. 

Autumn Etchings, 21, 267 — 271: Morning; Forenoon; Noon, After- 
noon; Evening; Night. 
Autumn Night, An, 13, 67; 23, 519. 
Autumn Sorrow; see Undertone. 
Autumn Storm, 20, 264; 26, 476. 
Autumn Storm, 32, 129. 
Autumn Wild-flowers, 15, 82; 24, 481. 
Autumn Winds, 35, 219. 
Avalon, 28, 84. 
Avalon ; see 32, 33. 
Avatars, 6, 246; 22, 61. 
Awakening, The, 20, 97; 26, 346. 



Baby, A, 33, 65. 

Baby Mary, 12, 44; 24, 197. 

Bad Luck, 29, 48. 

Bagpipe, The, 28, 241. 

Ballad of Low-Lie-Down; see Low-Lie-Down. 

Ballad of Sweethearts, A, 15, 74; Loves' Calendar, 33, 73. 

Ballad of the Rose, The, 20, 115; 26, 398. 

Bare Boughs, 12, 28; 24, 191 ; 31, 171. 

Battle, The, 36, 75. 

Battle, The, 9, 153; see War-Time Silhouettes. 

Battlefield, The; An Old Soldier to His Dog, 32, 207. 

Be Glad, 33, 69. 

Beale Isoud, La, 1, 165; 6, 166; Isolt, 22, 329. 

Beast, The, 28, 244. 

Beautiful, The, 4, 13; 8, 104; 26, 131. 

Beautiful-Bosomed, O Night; see Dithyrambics. See Chords. 

Beauty, 15, 83; 18, 256, 24, 353. 

Beauty, 35, 201. 

Beauty and Art, 17, 50; 25, 313; 31, 244. 

Beech Blooms, 17, 25; 24, 294. 

Beetle and Moth, 29, 54. 

Before the Ball, 4, 131 ; A Woman of the World, 22, 150. 

Before the End, 12, 21 ; 24, 226. 

471 



Madison C aw e i n 

Before the Rain, 17, 20; 18, 41 ; 24, 306. 

Before the Temple, 9, 1 88 ; 18, 1 28 ; 25, 240. 

Before the Tomb, 12, 88; 25, 40. 

Behram and Eddetma, 5, 158; 22, 476. 

Belgian Christmas, A (in 1914), 36, 67. 

Below the Sunset's Range of Rose, 7, 50; 23, 174; 31, 72. 

Beltenebros at Miraflores, 1, 170; 6, 163; Morning, 22, 108; Evening, 

22, no; 31, 238; Amadis at Miraflores, 22, 108; Amadis and 

Oriana, 31, 238. 
Beneath the Beeches, 4, 36; 8, 8; 24, 99. 
Berriers, The; see Forest and Field. 
Berrying, 14, 88. 

Bertrand De Born, 20, 105; 26, 401. 
Beside the Road, 32, 145. 
Best of Life, The, 33, 87. 
Better Lot, The, 13, 47; 26, 162. 
Beyond, 2, 53; €►, 237; The Light and Lark, 26, 179. 
Birthday Party, The, 29, 88. 
Bit of Coast, A, 28, 161. 
Black Knight, The, 31, 269. 
Black Vesper's Pageants, 19, 73; 24, 22. 
Blanch, 4, 48; A Pupil of Pan, 23, 312. 
Blind God, The, 13, 69; 23, 357. 
Blind Harper, The, 5, 129; 22, 345. 
Blodeuwedd, 4, 107; 8, 151; 22, loi. 

Blooms of the Berry, Poem; see. Preludes and Epilogues (a). 
Blown Rose, A 2, 68; 26, 135. 
Blue Bird, The, 17, 88; 18, 253; 24, 363. 
Blue Mertensia, The, 33, 34. 
Boy Columbus, The, 6, 100; 18, 73; 24, 80. 
Boy in the Rain, The, 28, 213. 
Boy Next Door, The, 29, 38. 
Boy on the Farm, The, 29, 1 16. 
Boyhood, 29, 168. 
Boy's Heart, A, 29, 165; 35, 84. 
Briar Rose, The, 33, 29. 
Bridie-Path, The, 4, 76; 8, 17; 24, loi. 
Broken Drouth, The, 17, 20; 24, 286; 35, 155. 
Broken Rainbow on the Skies of May, A; see Deserted. 
Brook, The, 19, 27; 24, 145. 
Brothers, The, 14, i ; 23, 246. 
Browning, Mrs. 28, 151. 
Browning, Robert; see Robert Browning. 

Brush Sparrow, The, 3, 135; 8,10; The Bush Sparrow, 18, 172; 24, 426. 
Bryan's Station; see How They Brought Aid to Bryan's Station. 
Bubbles, 34, 65. 

472 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Burden of Desire, The, 20, 230; 23, 274. 

Burden of the Buried Dead, The, 32, 249. 

Bush Sparrow, The ; see The Brush Sparrow. 

Butterflies, 32, 121. 

By the Annisquam, 28, 180. 

By the Summer Sea, 27, 25. 

By the Trysting-Beech; see In June. 

By Wold and Wood; see Forest and Field. 



Cabbage, The, 28, 237. 

Cabestaing, A Tragedy in Three Acts, 30, 153. 

Call of April, The, 33, 27. 

Call of the Heart, The, 32, 134. 

Cameo, A, 17, 45. 

Can I Forget. 13, 27; 23, 328. 

Can Such Things Be, 17, 88; 24, 345. 

CaraMia, 9, 163; 23, 358. 

Carissima Mia, 13, 56, 23, 517. 

Carmen, 3, 125; 8, 80; 23, 473. 

Carpe Diem, 33, 69. 

Castle of Love, The; see He Tells. 

Cat-Bird, The, 20, 202; 26, 450; 31, 64; 35, 77. 

Catch, A, 13, 71 ; A Christmas Catch, 23, 378. 

Catkins, 21, 254; 35, 147. 

Cavalier's Toast, A, 17, 63; Loyalty, 33, 78. 

Caverns, 17, 81 ; 18, 251 ; 24, 364. 

Caverns of Kaf, The (Love Sensual), 4, 168; 8, 121 ; 23, 431. 

Certain Truths about Certain Things, 29, 42. 

Changeling, The, 2, 130; 6-, 266; 25, 140. 

Chant Before Battle, 36, 64. 

Chaos and Order, 32, 147. 

Character, A, 2, 117; 6, 241 ; A Dreamer of Dreams, 22, 24; 31, 34. 

Charcoal-Burner's Hut, The, 21, 273. 

Charcoal Man, The, 29, 82. 

Chatterton ; see Days and Dreams. 

Check and Counter-Check, 2, 58. 

Child and Father, 36, 71. 

Child at the Gate, The, 36, 42. 

Child in the House, The; see Meeting and Parting. 

Childe Ronald, 22, 347. 

Children of the Moon, 25, 177. 

Chimeras; see Ghosts. 

Chipmunk, The, 17, 15; 24, 266; 31, 177; 35, 73. 



473 



Madison C aw e i n 

Chords [ten], 3, 138. Sleep While I Sing, 3, 138; Youth, 3, 139; 15, 
56; 26, 175. When Love Delays, 3, 141; 8, 88; 23, 382. Thou 
Hast Not Loved Her, 3, 143. O Life Thou Hast No Power, 3, 
144. If Thou Wouldst Know the Beautiful, 3, 148; 8, 89; 23, 
383. Anthemof Dawn,3, i5o;15, I3;18, I30;24, 331. Hymn to 
Desire, 3, 152; 15, 18; 25, 295; 31, i. As to a Nymph, 3, 154, 
and Dithyrambics, also Beautiful-Bosomed, O Night, 3, 155; 
15, 15; 25, 289; 31, 4. Now that the Orchard Leaves are Sear, 
3, I57;8, 90:23,385. 

Christmas Catch, A; see A Catch. 

Christmas Eve, 29, 99. 

Christmas Rose and Leaf,( a brochure published 191 3). 

Christmas Tree, The, 29, 96. 

Chryselephantine, 9, 74; 26', 82. 

Circe, 9, 180; 26, 67. 

City of Darkness, The, 11, 63, 25, no. 

Clairvoyance, 8, 93; 26, 259. 

Clairvoyance, 12, 36; 26, 210. 

Class Poem, June, 1886; see Mariners. 

Clearing, 11, 23; 24, 210. 

Climbing Cricket, The, 35, 158. 

Close of Day, The, 32, 238. 

Close of Summer, The, 28, 227. 

Close of Summer, The, 34, 113. 

Closed Book, The ; see The Closed Door. 

Closed Door, The, 36, 33. 

Clouds, 1, 98 ; 6, 81 ; 22, 59. 

Clouds, 35, 213. 

Clouds of the Autumn Night, 15, 70; 24, 167. 

Coign, A, 7, loi ; A Coign of the Forest, 18, 61 ; 24, 6. 

Coign of the Forest, A; see A Coign. 

Cold, 11, 37:24,228. 

Come to the Hills, see Waiting. 

Coming of Winter, The, 35, 231. 

Common Earth, The, 32, 78. 

Communicants, 19, 60; 24, 420. 

Compensation, 17, 61 : 24, 327. 

Comradery, 12, 5:24, 174; 31, 169. 

Comrades, 13, 21 : 24, 161 : Friends, 31, 167. 

Conclusion: see Preludes and Epilogues (y). 

Confession, A, 14, 83: 23, 388. 

Conscience, 15, 55 : 26 174. 

Consecration, 28, 215: second part: Here is the Place, 35, 104. 

Consecration : see She Speaks. 

Constance, 13, 61 : 23, 362. 

Content, 12, 123; 24, 247. 

474 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Content, 14, 86; 18, 206; 24, 443; 35, 88. 

Contrasts, 13, 24; 23, 516. 

Corncob Jones, An Oldham-County Weather Philosopher, 33, 95. 

Covered Bridge, The, 12, 19; 24, 231 ; 35, 5. 

Coward, The, 34, 117. 

Creaking Door, The, 36, 18. 

Creek, The, 12, 92; On Stony-Run, 24, 156. 

Creek Road, The, 12, 19; 24, 232; 35, 3. 

Creole Serenade ; see Serenade. 

Cricket, The, 17, 9; 24, 259. 

Cricket, The, 28, 247. 

Criminal, The, 28, 239. 

Cross, The, 12, 98; 26, 215. 

Cry of Earth, The, 36, 70. 

Crying in the Night, A, (a one-act play), 32, 185. 

Cup of Comus; see Preludes and Epilogues (gg). 

Cup of Joy, The, 17, 58; 25, 423. 



Dance of Summer, The, 34, 62. 

Dance of the Fairies, The; see Fairies. 

Dancer, The, 35, 186. 

Dark Day, A, 11, 27; A Dark Day of Summer, 24, 213. 

Dark Day of Summer, A; see A Dark Day. 

Dark Tower, The; see Elphin. 

Daughter of Merlin, The; see Preludes and Epilogues (e). 

Daughter of the Snow, The, 7, 133; 23, 414. 

Daughter of the States, A, 13, 66; 23, 521. 

Dawn, 1, 58; 6, 76; 26, 236. 

Dawn in the Alleghanies, 21, 263. 

Dawn in the Hills, 35, 210. 

Day and Night, 9, 95; 23, 392. 

Days and Days, 11, 34; 24, 214; 31, 173. 

Days and Dreams, 5, 93; Chatterton, 26, 151. 

Days Come and Go, 20, 213; 26, 452. 

Days of Used to be. The; (a brochure pubhshed 1913). 

Dead and Gone, 3, 158; 23, 406. 

Dead Cities, 18, 229; Hieroglyphs: 7, 79; 25, 392. 

Dead Day, The, 19, 61 ; 24, 421 ; 31, 199. 

Dead Dream, The, 34, 41. 

Dead Faun, The, 9, 190; The Fawn, 25, 267; 31, 253. 

Dead Lily, A, 2, 92; 6, 263; 22, 40; see Five Fancies. 

Dead Man's Run, 9, 201 ; 18, 164; 23, 241. 

Dead Oread, The, 1, 124; 6, 132; 22, 41; 31, 251. 

Dead Sea Fruit, 11, 13; 26, 116. 

475 



Madison C aw e i n 

Death, 15, 54; 26, 172. 

Death and the Fool, 28, 240. 

Death in Life, 5, 105; The Hall of Darkness, 25, 209. 

Death of Love, The, 19, 68 ; 24, 462 ; 31, 294. 

Dedication, The; see Preludes and Epilogues (j). 

Deep in the Forest, 7, loi ; 23, 196; 31, 37. 

Deficiency, 2, 40; 6, 283; 22, 50. 

Deity, 5, 95; 26, 142. 

Demeter, 1, 130; 25, 253. 

Demon Lover, The, 22, 358. 

Deserted, 1, 100; Lost Impressions, 6, 22; A Broken Rainbow on the 

Skies of May, 18, 96; 24, 71. 
Deserted, 32, 114. 

Desire of the Moth, The; see Never. 
Despair, 8, 95; 26, 261. 
Despair, 12, 119; 24, 245. 
Despondency, 12, 119; 24, 244. 
Destiny, 8, 95; 26, 260. 
Devil's Race-Horse, The, 29, 122. 
Dies Ilia, 34, 130. 
Dilly Dally, 29, 151. 
Dionysia, 15, 25; 18, 109; 25, 278. 
Dionysos, 1, 132; 25, 256. 
Dirge, A, 1, 109; 6, 14. 
Dirge, 12, 34; 26, 206. 
Discovery, 12, 4; 18, 222; 24, 447; 31, 7. 
Disenchantment of Death, 3, 128; 8, 108; 26, 144. 
Disillusion, 17, 60; 24, 326. 
Distance, 1, 16; 6, 10; 22, 48. 
Dithyrambics, 3, 154; 15, 15; 25, 289; Beautiful-Bosomed, O Night, 

31, 4. See Chords. 
Dittany, The, 34, 99. 
Diurnal, 2, 36; 6, 281; 22, 55. . 
Dogtown, 28, 165. 
Dolce far Niente, 15, 64; 25, 334. 
Dolorous Night, 32, 132. 
Don Quixote — A Sherry Wine. 36, 82. 
Doppleganger, 35, 197. 
Dough Face, 29, 136. 
Dragonflies, 32, 123; 35, 152. 
Dragon-Seed, 28, 145. 
Dream, The, 1, 161 ; 6, 30; 18, 84; 24, 63. 
DreamChild, The, 34, 31. 
Dream in the Wood, The, 34, 67. 

Dream of Christ, The, 1, loi ; 6, 24; That Night, 25, 119. 
Dream of Dread, The, 5, 102; What Dreams may Come, 25, 214. 

476 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Dream of Roderick, The, 15, 35; 25, 350. 

Dream of Sir Galahad, The; see The Three Urgandas. 

Dream Road, 28, 19. 

Dream Shape, A, 11, 53; 18, 184; 24, 432. 

Dreamer, The, 11, i ; 18, 237; 24, 355. 

Dreamer of Dreams, A; see A Character. 

Dreams, 13, 7; 24, 143. 

Dreams, 15, 83; 24, 482. 

Dreams of Summer, The, 32, 107. 

Drouth, 17, 18; 24, 283; 31, 181. 

Drouth, 32, 144. 

Drouth, 28, 222. 

Drouth in Autumn, 11, 35; 24, 215. 

Dryad, The, 2, 44 ; 6, 285 ; 22, 38. 

Dryads, The, a one-act lyrical drama of ancient Greece, 32, 57. See 

also It Was Among These Very Woods. 
Dum Vivimus, 17, 56; 25, 418. 
Dunes, The, 27, 24. 
Dusk, 17, 87; 24, 473; 31, 284. 
Dusk and the Whippoorwill, 32, 151. 
Dusk in the Woods, 13, 48; 24, 159; 31, 119. 
Duty and Love, 4, 104; 16, 16; 23, 9. 



Earth and Moon, 17, 85; 24, 472. 

Echo, 17, 61 ; 18, 257; 24, 354. 

Effort, 35, 225. 

Egret Hunter, The, 20, 182; 26, 390. 

Egypt, 8, 97; 26, 262. 

Eidolons, 9, 1 1 1 ; 26, 195 ; 31, 225. 

Elements, The, 28, 157. 

Eleusinian, 9, 72; 26, 86. 

Elf-Queen, The; see The Faery Rade. 

Elf Swashbuckler, An ; see A Faery Cavalier. 

Elf There Is, An, 5, 17; 16, 29; 23, 23; 35, 67. 

Elfin, 35, 185. 

Elfin, 20, 269; 26, 419. 

Elf's Song, The, 1, 194; Song of the Elf, 6, 92; 18, 76; 25, 145. 

Elixir of Love, The. 7, 119; 25, 9. 

Elphin, 5, 131 ; The Dark Tower, 22, 342. 

Elusion, 20, 163; 26, 426; 31, 23. 

Emerson, 8, 97; 26, 263. 

Enchanted Ground, 32, 8; 35, 26. 

Enchantment, 17, 87; 24, 343; 31, 287. 

Encouragement, 12, 121; 26, 223. 

477 



Madison C aw e in 

End of All, The, 17, 24; 25, 429. 

End of Summer, The, 19, 63; 24, 475; 31, 291. 

End of Summer, The, 36, 62. 

End of the Century, The, 17, 74; 25, 405. 

Epic, The, 5, 127; 22, 183. 

Epic of South-Fork, An, 7, 55; 23, 180. 

Epilogue ; see Preludes and Epilogues. 

Epiphany, 19, 52 ; 24, 408. 

Episode, An, 7, 163; 22, 440. 

Episode, An, 28, 196. 

Ermengarde ; see The Sleeper. 

Esoteric, 9, 165; Esoteric Beauty, 26, 97. 

Esoteric Beauty; see Esoteric. 

Evanescent Beautiful, The, 13, i ; 26, 166. 

Evasion, 7, 102; Spring on the Hills, 23, 196; 31, 37. 

Evasion, 15, 67; 23, 513. 

Evening, 21, 270. 

Evening; see The Heron. 

Evening; see Beltenelrose at Miraflores. 

Evening; see Forest and Field. 

Evening ; see Late November. 

Evening; see A November Sketch. 

Evening on the Farm, 19, 24; 24, 401 ; 31, 193; 35, li 

Eve of All-Saints, The, 5, no; 22, 164. 

Experience, 33, 72. 



Face to Face, 2, 125; 6, 214; 22, 160. 

Faery Burial, A, 32, 85. 

Faery Cavalier, A, 1, 78; 6, 264; An Elf Swashbuckler, 25, 147. 

Faery Child, The, 35, 225. 

Faery Forest, 35, 183. 

Faery Morris, 11, 45; 25, 163. 

Faery Pipe, The, 34, 53. 

Faery Rade, The, 1, 198; 6, 151 ; The Elf-Queen, 25, 142. 

Faery Ring, The, 35, 170. 

Failure, 34, 128. 

Failure, 17, 57 ; 25, 420. 

Fairies, 1, 89; 6, 96; The Dance of the Fairies, 25, 136. 

Fairies, 29, 26. 

Faith and Facts, 8, 92; 26, 257. 

Falerina; see In the Gardens of Falerina. 

Fall, 11, 28; 24, 440; To Fall, 18, 198. 

Fall, 4, 34; 8, 38; Fall Fancies, 24, 134; October, 31, 165. 



478 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Fall Fancies; see Fall. 

Fallen Beech, A, 12, i ; 18, 31 ; 24, 3; 35, 112. 

Falls of the Ohio, The; see The Ohio Falls. 

Fame, the Mermaid, 8, 95; 26, 260. 

Family Burying-Ground, The, 2, 96; 6, 291 ; 22, 57. 

Farmstead, The, 2, 80; 6, 191 ; 18, 146; 24, 74. 

Father, The, 33, 64. 

Fathers of Our Fathers, The, 14, 97; 26, 273. 

Faun, The; see The Dead Faun. 

February; see The First Quarter. 

Fen-Fire, The, 12, no; 24, 199. 

Fern-Seed ; see The Spell. 

Festival of the Aisne, The, 36, 69. 

Feud, 17, 21; 24, 288; 31, 221. 

Feud, The, 9, 196; 18, 159; 23, 237. 

Feud, The 28, 198. 

Feudists, 32, 240. 

Fiddledeedee and the Bumblebee, 29, 157. 

Field and Forest Call, 15, 59; 25, 328; 31, 82. 

Finale, 12, 97; 23, 527. 

Finis, 35, 240. 

Firearms, (a one-act play) 32, 169. 

First Barmecide, The, 6, 203; Jaafer the Barmecide, 22, 131. 

First Quarter, The: January; February; March, 20, 254; 26, 471: 
March, 31, 283. 

Five Fancies, 2, 87; see The Gladiolas; The Morning-Glories; The 
Tiger-Lily; Vengeance; A Dead Lily. 

Flamencine ; see Legendary. 

Floridian, 17, 39; 23, 374. 

Flower of the Fields, A, 12, 71 ; 18, 155; 24, 153. 

Flower Pageant, 32, 100. 

Flowers, 11, 11; 26, 115. 

Flowers, 35, 228. 

Flying Dutchman, The, 8, 93; 26, 259. 

Fool, The, 28, 228. 

For the Old, 33, 70. 

Forenoon, 21, 267. 

Forerunners, 29, 94. 

Forest, The, 32, 95. 

Forest and Field: Forest and Field, 1, 9, 30; 6, 45; 18, 5; 24, 29. By 
Wold and Wood, 1, 9; 6, 45; 18, 5; 24, 29. The Berriers: Morn- 
ing, 1, 30; 6, 48; 18, 8; 24, 31; Evening, 1, 31; 6, 49; 18, 10; 24, 
32. Harvesting: N.oon, 1, 33; 6, 51; 18, 12; 24, 34; Twilight, 
1, 34; 6, 52; 18, 13; 24, 35. Goingforthe Cows, 1, 35; 6, 53; 
18, 14; 24, 36. 



479 



Madison C aw e i n 

Forest Child, The, 28, 33. 

Forest Flute, A, 34, 64. 

Forest Idyl, A, 19, 46; 25, 364. 

Forest of Dreams, The, 12, 99; 25, 108. 

Forest of Fear, The, 34, 68. 

Forest of Old Enchantment, The, 34, 55. 

Forest of Shadows, The, 20, 92 ; 26, 336. 

Forest Place, A, 32, 102. 

Forest Pool, The, 8, 40; 23, 403. 

Forest Spring, The ; see The Spring. 

Forest Way, The, 28, 65; 31, 86; 35, 100. 

Forester, The ; see Der Freischutz. 

Forevermore, 2, 64; Let Us Be Glad, 35, 224. 

Foreword ; see Preludes and Epilogues. 

Fortune, 15, 54; 26, 171. 

Fortune, 33, 68. 

Fountain of Love, The, 33, 74. 

Fragments, 8, 99; 26, 140. 

Fragments, 1, 19; see Stars; Ghosts; Moonshine at Sea. 

Freischutz, Der, 3, 65; The Forester, 14, 35; 22, 371, 

Friends; see Comrades. 

Frogs at Night, 29, 68. 

From Cove to Cove, 27, 22. 

From Unbelief to Belief, 2, 166; At Rest, 22, 45. 

Frost, 1, 84 ;G, 65; 18, 232; 24, 456. 

Frost in Mav, 28, 136. 

Fulfillment, '12, 16; 24, 237. 



Gammer GafTer (A Ballad of Gloucester), 28, 184. 

Garden and Gardener, 28, 116. 

Garden Gossip, 28, 39 ; 31, 97 ; 35, 119. 

Garden of Days, The, 8, 92; 26, 257. 

Garden of Dreams, The; see Preludes and Epilogues (h). 

Gardens of Falerina, The; see In The Gardens of Falerina. 

Gargaphie, 4, 94; 8, 5; 25, 264; 31, 248. 

Genius Loci, 3, 162; The Wood God, 22, i. 

Genius Loci, 15, 4; 18, 218; 25, 286. 

Geraldine, 14, 15; 22, 431. 

Geraldine, Geraldine, 19, 69; Rose and Rue, 24, 415. 

Gertrude, 13, 63; 23, 267. 

Ghost, The, 29, 129. 

Ghost and a Dream, A, 28, 47. 

Ghost Flower, The, — The Indian Pipe, 32, 127. 



480 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Ghost of Yesterday, A, 36, 15. 

Ghost Stories, 15, 63; On Floyd's Fork, 25, 33. 

Ghost Weather; see Ghostly Weather. 

Ghostly Weather, 4, 75; 8, 47; Ghost Weather, 23, 402. 

Ghosts, 1, 19; Chimeras, 6, 18; Orgie, 18, 99; 24, 73. 

Ghosts, 15, 43 ; 25, 1 16. 

Ghosts, 36, 23. 

Giant and the Star, The, 29, 3. 

Gipsies, 28, 169. 

Gipsy, The, 35, 218. 

Gladiolas, The, 2, 87; 25, 158; see Five Fancies. 

Glamour, 20, 170; 25, 161. 

Gloramone, 4, 160; 25, 14; The Legacy of Death, 8, 115. 

Glory and the Dream, The, 15, 71 ; 23, 501. 

Glowworm, The, 15, 41 ; 25, 360. 

God's Green Book, 20, 188; 26, 441. 

Going for the Cows; see Forest and Field. 

Golden Hour, The, 17, 40. 

Golden Hour, The, 28, 219. 

Goose, The, 28, 243. 

Gramarye, 13, 5; 25, 122. 

Grasshopper, The, 34, 116. 

Grasshopper, The, 17, 12; 18, 38; 24, 27; 35, 75. 

Gray Day, A, 3, 122; 8, 21 ; 24, 113. 

Gray Garden, The, 32, 228. 

Gray Land, The, 32, 148. 

Gray November, 20, 217; 26, 456. 

Gray Sisters, The, 34, 51. 

Gray Skies, 21, 277. 

Gray Wood, The, 35, 196. 

Greece, 8, 96; 26, 262. 

Guilt, 32, 219. 

Guinevere, A, 1, 95; 6, 171; 22, 153. 

Gypsying; see Vagabonds. 



Hackelnberg, 1, 134:6, 127; 22, 127. 

Had We Lived in the Days, 5, 10; 16, 19; 23, 12. 

Haec Olim Meminisse, 36, 40. 

Hail Storm, The, 32, 146. 

Hall of Darkness, The; see Death in Life. 

Hallowe'en, 17, 67; 26, 199. 

Hallowmas, 20, 219; 26, 369. 

Hamadryad, The, 7, 113; 23, 207; 31, 42. 



481 



Madison C aw e i n 

Happiness, 33, 75. 

Happiness, 33, 25. 

Happy-Go-Lucky, 29, 159. 

Harvest Moon, The, 15, 8; 25, 326. 

Harvesting, 32, no. 

Harvesting; see Forest and Field. 

Haunted, 4, 138 ; 8, 42 ; 25, i . 

Haunted, 12, 114. 

Haunted Garden, The, 36, 31. 

Haunted House, The, 1, 1 1 1 ; 6, 104 ; 18, 47 ; 24, 49. 

Haunted Room, The, 1, 182; 6-, 107; 25, 202. 

Haunted Woodland, The, 12, 3; 24, 172. 

Haunters of Silence, 28, 131. 

Hawking,!, 163:6, 161 ; 22, 117. 

Hawthorne, 8, 97; 26, 263. 

He Tells, 4, 26; The Castle of Love, 8, 64; 23, 295. 

He Who Loves, 2, 42 ; 6, 232 ; Love, 23, 268. 

Headless Horseman, The, 11, 57; 25, 94. 

Heart of My Heart, 14, 93; 18, 209; 23, 269. 

Heart of Spring, The, 1, 66; 6, 69; 18, 94; 24, 69. 

Heart's Desire, The, 20, 240; 23, 395. 

Heart's Encouragement, 12, 107; The Ideal, 26, 211. 

Heart's Own Day, The, 34, 93. 

Heat, 19, 31 ; 24, 16. 

Heaven-Born, The, 20, 136; 26, 396. 

Helen, 17, 44; 23, 365. 

Hell and Heaven, 8, 92; 26, 258. 

Hepaticas; see Intimation. 

Her Eyes, 12, 41 ; 23, 354. 

Her Eyes and Mouth, 17, 61 ; 24, 328. 

Her Face, 17, 62 ; 24, 328. 

Her Portrait, 15, 75; Were I an Artist, 23, 505. 

Her Prayer, 17, 70. 

Her Soul, 17, 62; 24, 328. 

Her Vesper Song, 13, 54; 23, 499. 

Her Violin, 13, 52; 23, 492. 

Her Vivien Eyes, 14, loi ; 23, 496. 

Herb-Gatherer, The, 28, 211. 

Here is the Place where Loveliness Keeps House, 28, 216; 35, 104; 

from Consecration, second part. 
Heremite Toad, The, 1, 64; The Toad in the Skull, 26, 184. 
Heron, The: Evening; Night, 1, 108; 6, 78; 22, 60. 
Hesperian; see Preludes and Epilogues, (aa). 
Hey, Little Boy, 29, 155. 
Hieroglyphs, 7, 78; 25, 391 ; 18, 229: Dead Cities. 



482 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

High on a Hill, 28, i68. 

Higher Brotherhood, The, 13, 4; 26, 167. 

Highlands, The, Annisquam, 27, 20. 

Hilda of the Hillside, 21, 261. 

Hildegard, 7, 136; 25, 44. 

Hill Road, The, 32, 233. 

Hills, The, 12, 13; 18, 203; 24, 452. 

Hills of the West, 11, 10; 24, 204. 

Hillside Grave, The, 12, 20; 24, 230, 

His First Mistress, 4, 128; Love as it was in the Time of Louis XIV, 

22, 171. 
His Song, 4, 100. 
Hoar-Frost, 12, 22 ; 24, 227. 

Hollow, The, 1, 7; 6, 3; A Hollow of the Hills, 24, 97. 
Hollow of the Hills, A; see The Hallow. 
Home, 21, 29. 

Home, 12, 86; 24, 158; The Window on the Hill, 31, 139. 
Home; see Home Again. 
Home Again, 17, 30; Home, 33, 58. 
Home-Return, 35, 212. 
Homespun, 33, 53. 
Hoodoo, 17, 90. 
Hope, 33, 91. 
Hope On, 33, 90. 
Hours, The, 8, 95; 26, 260. 
House in the Hills, A; see A Mood. 
House of Death, The; see A Vision. 
House of Dreams, The, 35, 191. 
House of Fear, The, 13, 28; 26, 254. 
House of Fear, The — A Mystery (a play), 30, 57. 
House of Life, The, 35, 227. 
House of Life, The, 33, 94. 
House of Moss, The, 34, 57. 
House of Night, The, 32, 213. 
House of Pride, The, 32, 216. 
House of Song, The ; see Song. 
How They Brought Aid to Bryan's Station, 14, 72 ; Bryan's Station, 

33, 42. 
Hun, The, 8, 96; 26, 261. 
Hunter's Moon, The, 34, 115. 
Hushed House, The, 20, 238; 26, 465. 
Hylas, The, 20, i ; 26, 289. 
Hylas, 28, 68. 
Hymn to Desire, 3, 152; 15, 18; 25, 295; Hymn to Spiritual Desire, 

31, I. See Chords. 
Hymn to Spiritual Desire ; see Hymn to Desire. 

483 



Madison C aw e i n 

I Hear the Woodlands Calling, 32, 130. 

I Sat with Woodland Dreams, 32, 16; 35, 42, 

Ideal, The; see Heart's Encouragement. 

Ideal, The, 1, 1 73 ; 6, 32 ; Romance, 22, 87 ; 31, 235. 

Ideal Divination, 4, 9; 8, loi ; 23, 324. 

Identities, 9, 120; 26, 197. 

Idyll, An, 33, 38. 

Idyll of the Standing Stone, The, 7, 38; 23, 161 ; 31, 27. 

If I were Her Lover; see Phyllis. 

If Thou wouldst know the Beautiful, 3, 148; 8, 89; 23, 383. See Chords. 

Illusion, 4, 103; 16, 77; 23, 81. 

Image in the Glass, The, 17, 68; 25, 22. 

Imitated from Ossian: Oina-Morul's Lament, 9, 148; Toscar and 

Colmadona, 9, 149. 
Immortal, 4, 70; That Hour, 25, 216. 
Immortelles, 17, 53; 24, 320. 
Imperfection, 12, 14; 24, 235. 
Impressions, 8, 92; see Quatrains. 
In A Garden ; see Serenade. 
In Ages Past, 20, 267; 26, 479. 
In An Annisquam Garden, 28, 156. 
In An Old Garden, 1, 201 ; 6, no; 25, 200. 
In Arcady, 31, 278. 
In Autumn, 19, 51 ; 23, 488. 
In Clay, 21, 276. 

In Hospital, 9, 159; see War-Time Silhouettes. 
In June, 13, 25; By the Trysting-Beech, 24, 170. 
In June; see June. 
In Late Fall, 2, 26; 6, 254; 22, 72. 
In Lilac Time, 32, 223. 
In May, 15, 68 ; 23, 503 ; 31, 16. 
In Middle Spring, 2, 29; 6, 277; 22, 12. 
In Mythic Seas, 1, 121 ; 6, 124; 22, 193. 
In November, 2, 116; 6, 302; 22, 71. 
In Pearl and Gold, 36, 35. 
In Shadow, 9, 103; 25, 87. 
In Silhouette, 9, 160; The Woman on the Hill, 23, 233; see War-Time 

Silhouettes. 
In Solitary Places, 20, 28; 26, 309. 
In Summer, 12, 23; 24, 216. 
In the Beech Woods, 20, 174; 26, 434. 
In the Deep Forest, 32, 155. 
In the Forest, 17, 86; 24, 344. 
In the Forest of Love, 33, 83. 
In the Gardens of Falerina, 1, 159; 6, 154; The Gardens of Falerina, 

22, 85. 

484 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

In the Garden of Girls; see A Southern Girl. 

In the Lane, 19, 44; 24, 406; 31, 137. 

In the Mountains, 28, 202. 

In the Owl-light; see Revisited. 

In the Shadow of the Beeches, 17, 33 ; 24, i ; 31, 48. 

In the South; see Serenade. 

In the Storm, 28, 139. 

In the Wildwood, 5, 47; 24, 96. 

In Winter, 11, 38; 24, 218. 

In the Wood, 28, 36; 31, 116. 

Incident, An, 28, 233. 

Indian Legend, An, 25, 383. 

Indian Pipe, The; see The Ghost Flower. 

Indian Summer, 6, 102; 18, 56; 24, 42. 

Indifference, 12, 37; 23, 401. 

Infanticide, The, 28, 210. 

Insomnia, 12, 120; 26, 222. 

Inspiration, 17, 60; 24, 325. 

Interpreted, 11, 19; 26, no. 

Intimation, 6, 247; Hepaticas, 22, 17; 31, 61. 

Intimations, 12, 74; 18, 123; 25, 187. 

Intimations of the Beautiful, 9, i; 26, i; one fourth of the poem: 

31, 150. For the prelude see Preludes and Epilogues (z). 
Intimations of the Beautiful (Prelude) ; see Preludes and Epilogues (z). 
Intruder, The, 36, 13. 

Invocation; see Preludes and Epilogues (s). 
Iron Age, The, 36, 74. 
Iron Crags, The, 36, 57. 
Iron Cross, The, 36, 58. 
Ishmael, 5, 150; 22, 189. 
Isle of Voices, 17, 77; 25, 410. 
Isolt; see La Beale Isoud. 
It Was Among These Very Woods, 32, 64; 35, 49. 



Jaafer the Barmecide ; see The First Barmecide. 

Jaafer the Vizier, 8, 98; 26, 263. 

Jack-o'-Lantern, The, 29, 73. 

January; see The First Quarter. 

Jessamine and the Morning-Glory, The, 1, 61 ; 26, 181. 

Jeunesse la, et la Mort, 17, 46; 25, 426. 

John Davis, Boucanier, 7, 171 ; 25, 385. 

Jongleur, The, 20, 262; 26, 477. 

Jotunheim, 15, 22; 25, 273. 

Joy ; see Lalage. 

485 



Madison C a w e i n 

Joy Speaks, 33, 69. 

Joy's Magic, 33, 86. 

June, 1, 60; In June, 23, 331. 

Julia, 4, 44; Sylvia of the Woodland, 23, 308. 

July, 19, 34; 24, 398. 



Katydids and the Moon, 29, 61. 
Kennst Du das Land, (after Goethe), 17, 65. 
Kentucky (1885), 21, 26. 
Kentucky (1913), 33, 49. 
Kentucky, The (battleship) 15, 81. 
Khalif and the Arab, The, 5, 166; 22, 450. 
King, The, 2, 169; 6, 206; 22, 138. 
Kinship, 12, 39; 23, 352. 
Knight-Errant, 19, 62; 24, 346. 
Knight-Errant, The, 9, 100; 22, 368. 
Knowledge and Beauty, 9, 71 ; 26, 2. 
Ku Klux, 12, 102; 25, 82; 31, 223. 



Lady of the Hills, The, 12, 104; 22, 356. 

Lady of Verne, The, 4, 113; My Lady of Verne, 14, 48 ; 22, 422. 

Lalage, 2, 137; Joy, 33, 88. 

Lament, A, 1, 14; 6, 12; A Woodland Grave, 22, 30; 31, 6. 

Lamp at the Window, The, 20, 126; 26, 378. 

Lamplight Camp, The, 29, 50. 

Land of Candy, The, 29, 15. 

Land of Hearts made Whole,. The, 19, 3; 24, 372. 

Land of Illusion, The, 15, 45; 25, 340. 

Last Days, 5, 121 ; 23, 390. 

Last Scion of the House of Clare, The, 3, 95; An Old Tale Re-told, 
14, 55:22,409. 

Last Song, The, 15, 29; 25, 347. 

Last Word, A; see Preludes and Epilogues (i). 

Last Word, A, 36, 49. 

Late October, 3, 85; 8, 36; 24, 136. 

Late October Woods, 20, 172; 26, 432. 

Late November: Morning; Noon; Evening; Night, 20, 257; No- 
vember, 26, 365; November: Evening; Night, 31, 292. 

Laus Deo, 36, 78. 

Leaf-Cricket; see To the Leaf-Cricket. 

Leander to Hero, 3, 113; Parting of Leander and Hero, 25, 301. 

Legacy of Death, The; see Gloramone. 

486 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Legend of the Lily, A, 17, 72; 25, 401. 

Legend of the Stone, The, 13, 36; 25, 25. 

Legendary, 9, 105; Flamencine, 25, 42. 

Lesson, The, 28, 105. 

Let Us Be Glad ; see Forevermore. 

Let Us Do the Best That We Can (a brochure published 1913). 

Lethe, 9, 78 ; 18, 106 ; 25, 233. 

Letter, The, 7, 127; see The Message: War-Time Silhouettes. 

Life: Pessimist; Optimist, 19, 53; 24, 409. 

Life and Death, 12, 123; 24, 248. 

Life's Seasons, 15, 57; 26, 177. 

Light, 32, 160. 

Light and Lark, The; see Beyond. 

Light and Wind, 19, 64; 24, 469; 31, 286. 

Light in the Window, A, 33, 55, 

Lilith, 14, 84; Tristram to Isolt, 22, 365. 

Lilith's Lover, 28, 55. 

Lillita, 2, 109; 6, 239; 22, 63. 

Limnad, The, 1, 136; 6, 129; 18, 119; 25, 237. 

Lincoln (1809-1909), 28, 147. 

Lines, 13, 68. 

Lines, 15, 79. 

Lines to M. [Marie Montanye], 9, 178; Miriam, 23, 524. 

Little Bird, 29, 153. 

Little Boy and His Shadow, The, 29, 125. 

Little Boy Bad and Little Girl Rude, 29, 139. 

Little Boy Sleep, 29, 147. 

Little Boy, the Wind and the Rain, The, 29, 57. 

Little Girlie Good Enough, 29, 65. 

Little Messages of Joy and Hope, 33, 68. 

Little People, The, 20, 150; 25, 165. 

Locust, The; see To the Locust. 

Locust Blossom, The, 12, 122; 24, 247. 

Log-Bridge, The, 4, 83; 8, 31 ; 24, 121. 

Loke; see The Punishment of Loke. 

Loke and Sigyn; see The Punishment of Loke. 

Lonely Land, The, 36, 24. 

Long Ago, 26, 246. 

Long, Long Way, A, 29, no. 

Long Room, The, 36, 34. 

Longing [or Longings], 2, 28; 6, 255; 22, 9. 

Lora, 4, 46; Lora of the Vales, 23, 313. 

Lora of the Vales; see Lora. 

Lords of the Visionary Eye, 36, 16. 

Lost Dream, The, 36, 44. 

Lost Garden, The, 20, 166; 26, 429. 

487 



Madison C aw e i n 

Lost Garden, The, 35, 187. 

Lost Impressions; see Deserted. 

Lost Love, 4, 151 ; 8, 55 ; 23, 283. 

Lotus, 9, 81; 26, 78. 

Love; see He who Loves. 

Love A-milking, 4, 63. 

Love and a Day, 17, 16; 23, 369. 

Love and Loss, 17, 47; 25, 428. 

Love and the Sea, 33, 77. 

Love and the Wind, 34, 66. 

Love as it was in the Time of Louis XIV; see His First Mistress. 

Love Chase, The, 8, 92; 26, 257. 

Love Despised, 19, 67; 24, 465. 

Love I had Banished, 4, 24. 

Love in a Garden, 17, 37; 23, 372. 

Love of Loves, The, 17, 52; 24, 316. 

Love, the Interpreter, 17, 84; 24, 464. 

Love, the Song of Songs, 33, 85. 

LoveHness, 34, 28. 

LoveHness, 3, 92; 22, 4. 

Love's Calendar; see A Ballad of Sweethearts. 

Low-Lie-Down, 20, 119; 26, 355; Ballad of Low-Lie-Down, 31, 233. 

Loyalty; see A Cavalier's Toast. 

Lubber Fiend, The, 29, 29. 

Lullaby, A, 17, 54; 24, 321. 

Lust of the World, The, 36, 63. 

Lute Song, 20, 211. 

Lyanna, 4, 153; 8, 138; 23, 447. 

Lydia, 13, 64; 23, 364. 

Lynchers, 12, loi ; 18, 162; 23, 239; 31, 217. 



Mabinogi, A, 3, 159; Morgan Le Fay, 15, 33; 22, 353. 

Magic Purse, The, 36, 41. 

Magician, The, 35, 236. 

Maid who Died Old, A, 19, 59; 24, 418; 31, 231. 

Mameluke, The, 7, 166; 22, 466; 31, 261. 

Man in Gray, The, 17, 66. 

Man Hunt, The, 20, 74; 26, 333; 31, 227. 

March; see The First Quarter. 

March and May; see Anticipation. 

March Voluntary, A; see Wind and Cloud. 

Margery, 13, 59; 23, 360. 

Mariana, 20, 84; The Moated Grange, 26, 60. 

Marie, 9, 177; When She Draws Near, 23, 489. 

488 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Mariners, -Class Poem, Read June 1886, 21, 281. 

Masked, 17, 48. 

Masks, 4, 134; 8, 144; 23, 469. 

Mater Dolorosa, 5, 116; 22, 169. 

Matins, 35, 214. 

May, 11, 17; 18, 194; 24, 438; 31, 46. 

May Moon, The, 35, 205. 

Mayapple Flower, A, 33, 35. 

Meeting and Parting, 17, 36; The Child in the House, 35, 229. 

Meeting in Summer, 15, 60; 23, 494. 

Meeting in the Woods, 19, 57; 24, 413. 

Melancholia; see Sister of Dim Death. 

Melancholy, 12, 122; 24, 247. 

Melody, A, 1, 192; There are Fairies, 20, 146, 25, 129; 31, 130. 

Memories, 13, 31 ; 23, 485. 

Memory, A; see Rosemary. 

Menace, The, 33, 40. 

Mendicants, 21, 279; 31, 290. 

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, 14, 99; 26, 276. 

Mermaid, The, 1, 139; 6, 134; 25, 173. 

Message, The, 9, 155; see The Apparition: War-Time Silhouettes. 

Message, The; see War-Time Silhouettes. 

Message of the Lilies, The; 17, 71 ; 24, 329; a brochure published 1913. 

Messengers, 12, 42 ; 23, 355. 

Metamorphosis, 9, 187; 23, 350. 

Miching Mallecho, 35, 169. 

Microcosm, 15, 53; 26, 170. 

Midsummer, 28, 89 ; 31, 77 ; 35, 1 16. 

Midsummer, 2, 75; 6, 279; 22, 52. 

Midsummer Day, A, 28, 226; 35, 108. 

Midwinter, 2, 27; 6, 253; 22, 79. 

Mid-Winter, 11, 36; 18, 240; 24, 357. 

Mignon, 17, 42; 23, 367. 

Mill-Stream, The, 32, 96. 

Mill Water, The, 9, 108; 18, 81 ; 24, 60. 

Minions of the Moon, 34, 22. 

Minorcan, The, 7, 187; 26, 241. 

Minstrel, The, 6, 208; The Minstrel and the Princess, 22, 185. 

Minstrel and the Princess, The; see The Minstrel. 

Mirabile Dictu, 2, 20; 6, 271 ; 22, 22. 

Miracle of the Dawn, The, 20, 130; 26, 392. 

Miracles, 35, 205. 

Mirage (in the Arizona Desert), 33, 18. 

Miriam; see Lines to M. 

Miriam, 2, 144; 6, 244; 22, 65. 

Mirror, The, 1, 186; 6, 118; 25, 206. 

489 



Madison C aw e i n 

Misanthrope, The, 8, 96; 26, 361. 

Miser, The, 20, 266; 26, 480. 

Mnemonics, 9, 168; 26, 103. 

Mnemosyne, 2, 69; 6, 258; 18, 256; 24, 353. 

Moated Grange, The; see Mariana. 

Moated Manse, The, 14, 20; 22, 391. 

Modern Poetry, 32, 253. 

Moly, 9, 84; 26, 80; 31, 142. 

Monastery Croft, The, 2, 43; 6, 257. 

Monochromes, 11, 32; 26, 123. 

Mood, A, 2, 120; 6, 303; A House in the Hills, 24, 8. 

Mood o' the Earth, The, 3, 1 19 ; 8, 24 ; 24, 1 16 ; 35, 33. 

Moon Fairies, 36, 37. 

Moon in the Wood, The, 34, 25. 

Moon Spirit, The, 34, 27. 

Moonmen, The, 13, 15; 26, 186. 

Moonrise at Sea, 1, 20; 6, 82; 22, 69. 

Moonshiner, The, 9, 204; Moonshiners, 33, 46. 

Moonshiners; see The Moonshiner. 

Morgan Le Fay; see A Mabinogi. 

Morn (Morning) ; see Forest and Field. 

Morn that Breaks its Heart of Gold, The, 27, 11 ; 31, 208. 

Morning, 21, 267. 

Morning; see Beltenebros at Miraflores. 

Morning; see A November Sketch. 

Morning; see Late November. 

Morning and Night; see Triumph of Music. 

Morning-Glories, The, 2, 88; 25, 156; 35, 69; see Five Fancies. 

Morning Road, The, 35, 167. 

Mosby at Hamilton, 9, 157; 23, 235. 

Moss and Fern, 7, 107; 23, 201 ; 31, 38. 

Moth, the Rose and the Pink, The; see Vengeance. 

Mother, 33, 60. 

Mother, The, 32, 161. 

Moths, 4, 54; 16, 15; 23, 7. 

Moths and Fireflies, 15, 82; 24, 481. 

Motive in Gold and Gray, A, 12, 45; 25, 180; A Night in June, 18, 234. 

Mound Men, The, 32, 243. 

Mountain-Still, The, 28, 200. 

Mrs. Browning, 28, 151. 

Musagetes; see Preludes and Epilogues (e). 

Music, 8, 94; 18, 255; 24, 351. 

Music, 15, 21 ; 18, 178 24, 430. 

Music, 21, 265. 

Music, A Nocturne, 2, 149; 6, 308; The Symphony 26, 153. 

Music and Moonlight, 20, loi ; 26, 343. 

490 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Music and Sleep, 12, ii8; 24, 242. 

Music of Summer; see Summer. 

Musings, 17, 60; 24, 325. See also Apportionment; Compensation; 

Disillusion; Echo; Her Eyes and Mouth; Her Face; Her Soul; 

Inspiration ; Poppies ; Preparation ; Science ; Success ; The Universal 

Wind ; Victory. 
Mutatis Mutandis (twenty poems), 28, 228. 
My Lady of the Beeches, 34, 44. 
My Lady of Verne ; see The Lady of Verne. 
My Romance, 5, 125; 22, 181 ; 31, 229. 
My Rose; see There was a Rose. 
My Suit; see Preludes and Epilogues (p). 
Mysteries, 20, 63 ; 26, 383. 
Myth and Romance, 15, 3; 18, 214; 25, 227. 



Naiad, The, 9, 170; 18, 116; 25, 235. 

Name on the Tree, The, 36, 29. 

Nature Notes and Impressions, Prose and Verse, 1883-1905, 21, 1-253. 

Nearing Christmas, 36, 65. 

Nepenthe; see A Thought. 

Nereid, The; see Sea Dreams. 

Never, 19, 56; The Desire of the Moth, 33, 71. 

New God, The, 34, 129. 

New Year, The, 13, 73; 26, 268. 

New York Skyscraper, The, The Woolworth Building, 36, 79. 

Niello, A, 7, 66 ; 23, 192 ; 31, 12. 

Night, 1,56; 26, 232. 

Night, 21, 271. 

Night; see An Address to Night. 

Night; see Late November. 

Night; see The Heron. 

Night and Rain, 28, 128. 

Night and Storm at Gloucester, 28, 158. 

Night in June, A; see A Motive in Gold and Gray. 

Night Magic, 35, 208. 

Night-Rain, The, 34, 29. 

Night-Wind, The, 20, 185; 26, 438. 

Nightfall, 12, 108; 26, 217. 

Nightmare, 8, 93; 26, 259. 

Night's Revelries, 35, 181. 

Nightshade, 9, 90; 26, 76. 

Nixies, The; see The Nixies' Song. 

Nixies' Song, The, 1, 196; Song of the Nix, 6, 94; The Nixies, 25, 152. 

No More, 1, 99; Two Days, 6, 178; 22, 67. 

491 



Madison C aw e i n 

Nocturne, 20, 208; 23, 348. 

Nocturne, A, — Music; see Music, — A Nocturne. 

Noera, 4, 41 ; 8, 75; 23, 340; 31, 29. 

Noon, 21, 268. 

Noon; see Forest and Field. 

Noon ; see Late November. 

Nooning, 4, 8 1 ; 8, 29 ; 24, 119. 

Norman Knight, A, 9, 126; 22, 448. 

North Beach, Florida, 9, 143; 24, 82. 

North Shore, The (fourteen sonnets), 28, 155. 

Nothing To Do, 29, 102. 

November; see Late November. 

November Sketch, A, 1, 48; 6, 60; A November Walk, 24, 138; 

Morning, 24, 138; Evening, 24, 139. 
November Walk, A; see A November Sketch. 

Now that the Orchard Leaves, 3, 157; 8, 90; 23, 385. See Chords. 
Nymph and Faun ; see Two. 



O Life, Thou hast no Power, 3, 144. See Chords. 

O Maytime Woods, 7, 17; 23, 136; 31, 8. 

Occult, 12, 6; 24, 176. 

Ocean Mists, 32, 102. 

Ocklawaha, The, 7, 184; 26, 238. 

October, 12, 27; 18, 211 ; 24, 445. 

October; see Fall. 

October; see To Autumn. 

Ode, An, — In Commemoration of the Founding of the Massachusetts 

Bay Colony, 27, i ; a portion of the ode: 31, 208. 
Of the Slums, 17, 82 ; 24, 468. 

Oglethorpe (ode on the founding of Oglethorpe University), 36, 90. 
Oh, When I Heard, 32, 252. 

Ohio Falls, The, 1, 75; The Falls of the Ohio, 24, 127. 
Oina-Morul's Lament; see Imitated from Ossian. 
Old Barn, The, 11, 22; 18, 186; 24, 434; 35, 6. 
Old Bayou, The, 32, 119. 

Old Bud Riley; see To James Whitcomb Riley. 
Old Byway, The, 2, 34; 6, 287; 22, 32; 31, 70. 
Old Christmas, 35, 233. 
Old Creek, The, 34, iii. 
Old Dreamer, The, 36, 47. 
Old Farm, The, 4, 86; 8, 13; 24, 106; 31, 54. 
Old Garden, The, 34, 107. 
Old Gate Made of Pickets, The, 28, 41. 
Old Ghosts, 36, 28. 

492 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Old Herb-Man, The, 20, 72 ; 26, 411. 

Old Home, The, 20, 69; 26, 409. 

Old Home, The, 34, 102. 

Old Homes, 15, 58; 25, 330; 31, 84; 35, 65. 

Old House, The, 13, 8; 25, 106. 

Old House by the Mere, The, 1, 68 ; 6, 112; 25, 197. 

Old House in the Wood, The, 34, 124. 

Old Inn, The, 5, 119; 18, 79; 24, 58. 

Old Jack Frost, 29, 76. 

Old Lane, The, 28, 30. 

Old Love, The, 32, 221. 

Old Man Dreams, The, 13, 19; 23, 483. 

Old Man Rain, The, 29, 56. 

Old Man Winter, 29, 106. 

Old Place, The, 32, 138. 

Old Remain, The, 34, 100. 

Old Saw-Mill, The, 32, 97. 

Old Sir John, 20, 265 ; 26, 478 ; 31, 297. 

Old Sis Snow, 29, 86. 

Old Snake Doctor, 29, 119. 

Old Soldier to His Dog, An, 32, 207. 

Old Song, An, 12, 32; 24, 196; A Road Song, 31, 147. 

Old Spring, The, 11, 8; 18, 224; 24, 448; 31, 32. 

Old Swing, The; see Swinging. 

Old Tale Re-told, An ; see Last Scion of the House of Clare. 

Old Water Mill, The, 15, 9; 25, 315; 31, 200. 

Oldham-County Weather Philosopher, An; see Corncob Jones. 

Oldtown, 32, 136. 

Olive, 6, 5; Olivia in the Autumn, 23, 306. 

Olivia in the Autumn; see Olive. 

Omens, 12, 17; 24, 234. 

On a Dial, 2, 73 ; 6, 262 ; 26, 137. 

On a Headland, 32, 95. 

On a Portrait, 8, 57. 

On Chenoweth's Run, 17, 29; 24, 300. 

On Floyd's Fork; see Ghost Stories. 

On Midsummer Night, 20, 154; 25, 132. 

On Old Cape Ann (seven sonnets), 27, 19. 

On Opening an Old School Volume of Horace, 36, 77. 

On Re-reading Certain German Poets, 36, 76. 

On Re-reading the Life of Haroun Al Raschid, 18, 256; 8, 98; 24, 352. 

On Stony-Run ; see The Creek. 

On the Death of T. B. A. [T. B. Aldrich], 32, 252. 

On the Eve of St. John ; see St. John's Eve. 

On the Farm, 11, 39; 24, 219. 

On the Farm, 35, 235. 

493 



Madison C aw e i n 

On the Hilltop, 20, 263; 26, 475. 

On the Jellico-Spur (to John Fox, Jr.), 3, 105; On the Jellico Spur of 
the Cumberlands, 14, 77; 24, 87. 

On the Jellico Spur of the Cumberlands; see On the Jellico-Spur. 

On the Road, 36, 52. 

Once, 7, 198; With the Tide, 26, 92. 

One Day and Another, 5, i ; 16 (A lyrical eclogue. The entire vol- 
ume) ; 23, I ; Quiet Lanes (from Part III), 31, 89. See also Moths; 
Duty and Love; Had We Lived in the Days; An Eli There Is; 
Quiet Lanes; Illusion; What Little Things. 

One Night, 7, 115; 23, 407. 

One Who Died Young, 34, 127. 

One Who Loved Nature, 28, 79; 31, 93. 

Opium, 12, 117; 24, 241. 

Opportunity, 15, 83; 24, 482. 

Optimist; see Life. 

Orgie ; see Ghosts. 

Oriental Romance, 4, 22; 8, 60; 23, 317; 31, 259. 

Orlando; see Orlando Mad. 

Orlando Mad, 1, 179; Orlando, 6, 156; 22, 119. 

Ossian; see Ossian's Poems. 

Ossian's Poems, 1, 117; Ossian, 6, 123; 26, 256. 

Other Woman, The, 17, 91. 

Our Cause (July 4, 1898), 26, 281. 

Our Dreams, 28, 220. 

Out of the Depths, 17, 49; 23, 397. 

Overseas, 4, 16; 8, 51 ; 23, 285; 31, 102. 

Oversoul, The, 35, 162. 

Owl, The, 28, 245. 

Owl Roost, 7, 105; 23, 200. 

Owlet, The, 19, 17; 24, 387; 31, 190; 35; 91. 

Owl's Roost, 32, 28; 35, 46. 

Ox, The, 28, 242. 



Pagan, 14, 96; 25, 311. 
Pan, 2, I5;6, 25i;22, 27. 
Pan of the Beech Woods, 35, 179. 
Pandora, 32, 257. 
Pandora's Box, 35, 238. 

Paphian Venus, The, 9, 183; 25, 260; 31, 255. 
Parting, The, 7, 131 ; 23, 412; 31, 219. 
Parting of Leander and Hero; see Leander and Hero. 
Passing Glory, The, 17, 89; 24, 476. 

Passing of the Beautiful, The, 1, 46; 6, 63; Sleet Storm in May, 18» 
89; 24, 67. 

494 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Passion, 13, 41 ; 26, 163. 

Pastoral Love, 4, 68; 8, 71 ; 23, 302. 

Pastures by the Sea, 27, 23. 

Path by the Creek, The, 17, 3; 24, 271. 

Path to Faery, The, see Preludes and Epilogues (cc). 

Path to the Woods, A, 32, 104; 35, 52. 

Path to Yesterday, The, 32, 140. 

Paths, 11, 41 ; 24, 221 ; 31, 121. 

Pause, 12, 108; 26, 219. 

Pax Vobiscum, 2, 18; 6, 229; 22, 43. 

Peace, 7, 205; 26, 251. 

Pearls, 17, 86; 24, 466. 

Penetralia, 20, 133; 26, 394; 31, 21. 

Penury, 12, 122; 24, 246. 

Peredur, Son of Evrawc; see The Son of Evrawc. 

Perle des Jardins, 1, 114; 6, 174; 22, 156. 

Persephone, 1, 128; 25, 250. 

Pessimist, The, 28, 232. 

Pessimist; see Life. 

Pestilence, 17, 59; 24, 324. 

Phantasy, A; see Art. 

Phantoms, 9, 117; 26, 190; 31, 148. 

Phyllis, 4, 49; 8, 78; If I were Her Lover, 23, 337. 

Picture, The; see Rosemary. 

Pictured, 12, 37; This is the Face of Her, 23, 399. 

Pixy Wood, 34, 49. 

Place, The, 28, 26. 

Place of Pools, The, 32, 98. 

Pledges; see Thoughts. 

Plough Boy, The, 34, 98. 

Ploughman, The, 32, 150. 

Poe, 8, 97; 26, 262. 

Poe (1809- 1 909), 28, 150. 

Poet, A, see 32, 5. 

Poet, A, 35, 230. 

Poet, The, 19, 22 ; 24, 390. 

Poet of the Sierras, The; see Preludes and Epilogues (d). 

Poet, the Fool and the Faeries, The, — a lyrical eclogue, 32, 3. See also 
Enchanted Ground; Where the Path Leads; I Sat with Wood- 
land Dreams; Owl's Roost; The Tavern of the Bees. 

Poetry, 8, 94; 18, 254; 24, 351. 

Poetry and Philosophy, 14, 103; 24, 348. 

Poets Epitaph, A; see Preludes and Epilogues (hh). 

Pond, The, 29, 79. 

Pool Among the Rocks, A, 28, 167. 

Poppet-Show, The, 29, 132. 

495 



Madison C aw e i n 

Poppies, 17, 6i ; 24, 327. 

Poppy and Mandragora, 9, 86; 26, 70; 31, 144. 

Porphyrogenita, 4, 19; 8, 62; 23, 292. 

Portents, 36, 55. 

Portrait, The, 5, 145; 22, 471 ; 31, 265. 

Praeterita, 12, 115; 25, 85. 

Prayer for Old Age, A, 28, 119. 

Pre-existence, A, 5, 154; 22, 134. 

Preludes; see Preludes and Epilogues: for first part (n), second part (z). 

Preludes and Epilogues, and first line from original version : 

(a) Wine-warm winds that sigh and sing, 
Proem, 1, Blooms of the Berry; Proem, 6; 22, first poem. 

(b) O lyrist of the lowly and the true, 
James Whitcomb Riley, 5, first poem; 23, first poem. 

(c) Oh, shall I sing of joy I only remember as departed joy. 
Proem, 7; Epilogue, 23, 260. 

(d) How shall I greet him? 
Joaquin Miller, 8, first poem; The Poet of the Sierras, 26, 270. 

(e) From the mountain's hoarse greeting came hollow, 
M usage tes,3, 116; Epilogue,8 ; The Daughter of Merlin, 22, 363. 

'f) They took him into confidence — each oak, 

9, first poem; Proem, 26, 287. 
(g) Long are the days * * * and nights, 

11, first poem; Proem to Undertones, 26, 107. 
(h) Not while I live may I forget, 

12, first poem; Proem, 25; The Garden of Dreams, 31, 125. 
[i) Not for thyself but for the sake of song, 

A Last Word, 12, 123; 24, 249. 
(j) Ah, not for us the Heavens that hold, 

The Dedication, 13, first poem; To Harrison S. Morris, 25, 377. 
(k) Beyond the moon, within a land of mist. 

Epilogue, 13, 76; 25, 218. 
(1) And one, perchance, will read and sigh, 

Foreword, 14; To R. E. Lee Gibson, 22, 217. 
(m) The old enthusiasms are dead, 

Afterword, 14, 106; 26, 283. 
^n) There is no rhyme that is half so sweet, 

Proem, 15; 25, 225; Preludes, first part, 31, 44. 
(o) What though I dreamed of mountain heights, 

APrelude, 6, 7;23, 265;26, 417. 
(p) In the first rare spring of song * * * Fair the dandelion is. 

My Suit, 2, 94; Foreword, 17; 24, 253. 
(q) What vague traditions do the golden eves * * * inscribe, 

Afterword, 17, 94; 24, 483. 
(r) There is a poetry that speaks. 

Prologue, 18, 24; 35, 125; see also Substratum, 1, 70; 6, 42. 

496 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Preludes and Epilogues, and first line from original version, continued: 
(s) O Life! O Death! O God! Have I not striven? 

Invocation, 1, 86; 6, 27; 24, 258; Epilogue, 18, 260. 
(t) Oh, for a soul that fulfills, 

Proem, 19; 24, 367. 
(u) You are weary of reading, 

20, first poem; To Gertrude, 26, first poem. 
(v) We have worshipped two gods, 

Epilogue, 20, 273; 26, 482. 
(w) Would I could talk as the flowers talk, 

21, first poem. 

(x) These are the flowers I bring to thee, 

To Gertrude, 22, 83. 
(y) The songs love sang to us are dead, 

Conclusion, 11, 30; 23, 529. 
(z) A thought to lift me up to * * * wildflowers. 

Intimations of the Beautiful, 9, i ; 26, i ; Preludes, second 
part, 31, 44. 
(aa) The path that winds by wood and stream 

Hesperian, Proem, 28; 35, 99. 
(bb) You, who are four years old, 

To My Little Son Preston [Preston Cawein, whose name 
was later changed to Madison Cawein II], 29, 2. 
(cc) When dusk falls cool as a rained-on rose. 

Epilogue, 29, 171 ; The Path to Faery, 31, 127. 
(dd) The leaves are fading; and on sea and shore, 

To Alice Monroe Pape, 32, first poem, 
(ee) What loveliness the years contrive to rob us of! 

Prologue, 34, 11. 
(ff) There is a world Life dreams of, long since lost. 

Epilogue, 34, 131. 
(gg) The nights of song and story. 

The Cup of Comus, Proem, 36, 11. 
(hh) Life was unkind to him, 
A Poet's Epitaph, 36, 96. 
Premonition, 28, 223. 

Pre-ordination, 5, 134; Song and Story, 25, 379. 
Preparation, 17, 60; 24, 326. 
Princess of Thule, A; see The Romanza. 
Problems, 29, 143. 
Problems; see As It is. 
Processional, 15, 84; 25, 372. 
Proem ; see Preludes and Epilogues. 
Proem to Undertones; see Preludes and Epilogues, (g). 
Prologue ; see Preludes and Epilogues. 
Prototypes, 17, 83 ; 24, 477 ; 31, 282. 

497 



Madison C a w e i n 

Punishment of Loke, The, 1, 142; Loke, 6, 138; Loke and Sigyn, 

22, 197. 
Pupil of Pan, A; see Blanch. 
Puritans' Christmas, The, 15, 77; 26, 265. 
Purple Flower, The, 35, 202. 
Purple Valleys, The, 15, 44; 18, 181 ; 25, 338. 
Pursuit, 32, 156. 



Quarrel, The, 3, 118; 23, 522. 

Quatrains: 8 (Impressions, in 8), 92-98; 12, 122-123; 15, 82-83; 
18, 254-257; 24, 246-248, 351-354. 481-482; 26, 257-264. See 
Alchemy; Autumn Wild-Flowers; Beauty; Clairvoyance; Con- 
tent; Despairs; Destiny; Dreams; Echo; Egypt; Emerson; 
Faith and Facts; Fame; The Flying Dutchman; The Garden of 
Days; Greece; Hawthorne; Hell and Heaven; The Hours; The 
Hun; Jaafer, the Vizier; Life and Death; The Locust Blossom; 
The Love Chase; Melancholy; The Misanthrope; Mnemosyne; 
Moth and Fireflies; Music; Nightmare; On Reading the Life 
of Haroun Al Raschid; Opportunity; Penury; Poe; Poetry; 
Rome; Sorrow; The Stars; Strategy; Tempest; The Three 
Elements; Trial; The Unimaginative; The Wind in the Pines. 

Quest, The, 17, 35 ; 24, 304; 31, 123. 

Questionings, 2, 22 ; 6, 231 ; 26, 139. 

Qui Docet, Discit, 17, 43. 

Quiet, 11, 2; 18, 176; 24, 429. 

Quiet Lanes, 5, 41 ; 16, 54; 23, 52; 31, 89. 

Quo Vadis, 14, 104; 24, 349. 



Rag-Picker, The, 28, 212. 

Ragamuffin, 29, 70. 

Ragweed, 35, 175. 

Raid, The, 9, 199; 23, 244. 

Rain, 13, 12; 18, 196; 24, 439:31, 183; 35, 59. 

Rain, The, 1, 21; 6, 72; x\ Spring Shower, 22, 14. 

Rain and Wind, 12, 24; 24, 186. 

Rain in the Woods, 19, 42; 24, 13; 35, 122. 

Rain-Crow, The, 3, 90; 15, 6; 25, 323; 31, 80; 35, 56. 

Rainless, 28, 108. 

Reasons, 15, 67; 23, 497. 

Reconciliation, 36, 53. 

Red-Bird, The, 7, 14; 31, 10. 

Red-Bird, The, 9, 172; 24, 209; 35, 79. 

498 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Red Leaves and Roses, 7, i ; 23, 1 16. 

Reed Call for April, 17, 41 ; 23, 490. 

Reed Shaken with the Wind, A, 12, 50; 25, 52. 

Reflections, 32, 250. 

Reincarnation, 17, 28; 24, 299. 

Rembrandts, 12, 103; 25, 114. 

Remembered, 11, 51; 26, 121. 

Republic, The, 33, 9. 

Requiem, 11, 25; 26, 117; 31, 215. 

Requiescat, 17, 34; 24, 302. 

Resignation, 7, 200; Apportionment, 26, 95. 

Response, 12, 16; 18, 245; 24, 360. 

Rest, 12, 35; 26, 208. 

Restraint, 15, 72; 23, 330. 

Return, The, 7, 125; see War-Time Silhouettes. 

Return, The, 32, 225. 

Revealment, 20, 200; 26, 359; 31, 60. 

Revealment, 12, 106; After Death, 23, 482. 

Revelation, 9, 96; 26, 100. 

Reverie ; see To Revery. 

Revisited, 4, 148; Act III, 8, 53; In the Owl-light, 25, 89. 

Revisited, 12, 89; 25, 104. 

Ribbon, The, 34, 95. 

Riches, 17, 50; 24, 312. 

Ride, The, 1, 189; 23, 507. 

Riders in the Night, 28, 191. 

Riley, (his birthday) ; see To James Whitcomb Riley. 

Rising of the Moon, The, 36, 72. 

Road, The, 28, 28. 

Road Back, The, 33, 62. 

Road Home, The, 17, 5; 24, 280. 

Road Song, A ; see An Old Song. 

Robber Gold, 32, 203. 

Robert Browning, 36, 80. 

Rock, The, 13, 10; 24, 163. 

Romance, 34, 33. 

Romance; see The Ideal. 

Romantic Love, 4, 65; 8, 69; 23, 300. 

Romanza, The, 5, 123; A Princess of Thule, 22, 360. 

Romaunt of the Oak, 4, 192; 15, 30; 25, 47. 

Romaunt of the Roses ; see Treachery. 

Rome, 8, 96; 18, 255; 24, 352. 

Rose, The, 15, 74. 

Rose and Jasmine, 32, 236. 

Rose and Leaf, 28, 141. 

Rose and Redbird, 34, 59. 

499 



Madison C aw e i n 

Rose and Rue; see Geraldine, Geraldine. 

Rose Leaves when the Rose is Dead, 20, 122; 26, 340. 

Rose o' the Hills, A, 12, 33; 25, 431. 

Rose of Hope, The, 33, 89. 

Rosemary, 15, 62; A Memory, 25, 332; The Picture, 31, 140. 

Rosemary, 9, 92 ; 26, 74. 

Rose's Secret, The, 20, 232; 26, 463. 

Rosicrucian, 4, 97. 

Rosicrucian, 9, 138; 22, 445; 31, 240. 

Rue-Anemone, The, 20, 196; 25, 242. 

Ruined Mill, The, 1, 81 ; 6, 115; 25, 29; 35, 10. 



Sabbath, 32, 112. 

St. John's Eve, 2, 133; 6, 268; On the Eve of St. John, 25, 149. 

Salamander, The (Love Demonic), 9, 128; 23, 438. 

Santa Claus, 29, 91. 

Satan, 7, 195; 26, 255. 

Scarecrow, The, 29, 52. 

Scarecrow, The, 28, 229. 

Science, 17, 60; 24, 326. 

Screech-Owl, The, 17, 14; 24, 264. 

Sea Dreams, 1, 154; 6, 83; The Nereid, 25, 171. 

Sea Faery, The, 34, 42. 

Sea King, The, 12, 100; 6, 294, 25, 168. 

Sea Lure, 32, loi. 

Sea Spirit, The, 11, 52; 25, 98; 31, 246. 

Seasons, 28, 114. 

Second Sight, 11, 12; 26, iii. 

Secret, The, 9, 115; The Woman by the Water, 25, 35. 

Secret Room, The, 32, 253. 

Self, 5, 97; 26, 248. 

Self and Soul, 5, 99; 25, 194. 

Semper Idem, 2, 60. 

Senorita, 3, 1 1 1 ; 8, 83 ; 23, 479 ; 31, 100. 

September, 17, 89; 24, 474. 

September on Cape Ann, 28, 155. 

Serenade, 1, 185; In the South, 2, 12; Creole Serenade, 6, 39; 18, 63; 

23, 321. 
Serenade, 12, 38; In A Garden, 23, 335; 31, 135. 
Service, 34, 86. 
Service, 28, 230. 

Seven Devils, The; see the Seven Devils of Mahomet. 
Seven Devils of Mahomet, The, 7, 170; The Seven Devils, 22, 460. 
Shadow, The, 28, 123. 

500 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Shadow, The, 36, 50. 

Shadow Garden, The, A Phantasy (a play), 30, i. 
Shadows, 2, 56. 

Shadows on the Shore ; see At the Ferry. 
She is So Much, 12, 40; 23, 353. 
She Speaks, 4, 29; 8, 67; Consecration, 23, 298. 
SibylHne, 9, 76; 26, 84. 
Sic Vos Non Vobis, 7, 196; 26, 90. 
Silk o'the Weed, 32, 149. 
Simulacra, 12, 20; 18, 249; 24, 362. 
Sin, 12, 120; 26, 253. 
Since Then, 13, 20; 23, 481 ; 31, 118. 
Siren Sands, 7, 87; 23, 217. 
Sirens, The, 2, 70; 6, 259; 23, 346. 

Sister of Dim Death, The, 6, 196; Melancholia, 22, 141. 
Slave, The, 7, 168; 22, 443; 31, 263. 
Sleep, 4, 72; 8, 106; 26, 148. 
Sleep is a Spirit, 17, 64. 

Sleep While I Sing to Thee, 3, 138. See Chords. 
Sleeper, The, 1, 191 ; 6, 35; Ermengarde, 22, 125. 
Sleet Storm in May; see The Passing of the Beautiful. 
Snow, 12, 31; 24, 195. 
Snow and Fire, 15, 71 ; 23, 502. 
So Many Ways (a brochure published 191 1). 
So Much To Do, 33, 81. 

Soldier's Return, The, 7, 125; see War-Time Silhouettes; The Return. 
SoHtary, The, 20, 66; 26, 413; 31, 51. 
Solstice, 33, 36. 

Some Reckon Time by Stars, 28, 143. 

Some Summer Days, 7, 47; 23, 171 ; 31, 72. See also Below the Sun- 
set's Range of Rose. 
Somnambulist, The, 12, 116; 24, 240. 

Son of Evrawc, The, 7, 143; Peredur, The Son of Evrawc, 22, 307. 
Song, 2, 123; 6, 226; The Summer Sea, 23, 525. 
Song, 11,7; The House of Song, 26, 1 14. 
Song and Story; see Pre-ordination. 
Song for All Day, A, 29, 163. 
Song for Labor, A, 17, 92; 24, 314. 
Song for Old Age, A, 13, 45 ; 26, 160. 
Song for Yule, A, 15, 76; 23, 380. 
Song in Season, A, 11, 43; 24, 244. 
Song of Cheer, A, 33, 66. 
Song of Cheer, A, 33, 92. 
Song of Songs, The, 36, 84. 
Song of the Elf; see The Elf's Song. 
Song of the Night-Rider, 28, 205. 

501 



Madison C aw e i n 

Song of the Nix; see The Nixie's Song. 

Song of the Road, A, 28, 102; Whatever the Path (a brochure pub- 
lished 1913). 

Song of the Snow, A, 20, 221 ; 26, 385. 

Song of the Spirits of Spring, 1, 37; 6, 85; Spirits of Spring, 22, 19. 

Song of the Thrush, The; see The Wood Thrush. 

Sorrow, 12, 123; 24, 248. 

Soul, The, 15, 55; 26, 173. 

Sound of the Sap, The; see Visions. 

Sounds and Sights, 28, 134. 

Sounds and Sights, 29, 59. 

Southern Girl, A, 13, 65; In the Garden of Girls, 23, 511. 

Spanish Main, The, 32, 247. 

Speckled Trout, The, 35, 193. 

Spell, The, 7, 123; 31, no; Fern-Seed, 23, 290. 

Spirit of Dreams, 15, 49; 25, 370. 

Spirit of the Forest Spring, The, 19, 13; 25, 305; 31, 133. 

Spirit of the Star, The, (Love Spiritual), 4, 182; 8, 133; 23, 417. 

Spirit of the Van, The, (Love Ideal), 4, 176; 8, 127; 23, 423. 

Spirits of Light and Darkness, The, 1, 40; 6, 88; 23, 454. 

Spirits of Spring; see Song of the Spirits of Spring. 

Spirits of the Air, 35, 202. 

Spring, 12, 15; 18, 242; 24, 358. 

Spring, (after Goethe), 15, 79. 

Spring, The, 1, 107; 6, 297; The Forest Spring, 18, 226; 24, 450; 35, 103. 

Spring in Florida, The, 7, 189; 26, 243. 

Spring on the Hills; see Evasion. 

Spring Shower, A; see The Rain. 

Spring Twilight, 1, 18; 6, 71; 18, 87; 24, 65. 

Standing-Stone Creek, 13, 13; 24, 165. 

Stars, 1, 19. 

Stars, The, 15, 83; 18, 257; 24, 353. 

Storm, 13, 30; 26, 226. 

Storm, The, 9, 174; 24, 84. 

Storm at Annisquam, 27, 21. 

Storm Sabbat, 28, 163. 

Stormy Sunset, A, 2, 72 ; 6, 261 ; 22, 29. 

Strategy, 7, 191 ; Winter Dreams, 24, 149. 

Strategy, 12, 122; 24, 246. 

Street of Ghosts, A, 17, 31 ; 25, 37. 

Strollers, 12, 112; 23, 271. 

Study in Gray, A; see Tones. 

Substratum; see Preludes and Epilogues (r). 

Success, 11, 7; 26, 113. 

Success, 17, 60; 24, 326. 

Succuba, The, 4, 119; 8, 147; 23, 464. 

502 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Summer, 1, 53 ; 6, 55 ; 18, 18 ; 24, 38. 

Summer, 8, 3; To Summer, 24, no; Music of Summer, 31, 74. 

Summer Day, A, 34, 105. 

Summer Noontide, 19, 28; 24, 393. 

Summer Sea, The; see Song. 

Sun and Flowers, 29, 24. 

Sunset and Storm, 17, 25; 24, 293; 31, 88. 

Sunset Clouds, 17, 47; 24, 311. 

Sunset Clouds, 35, 213. 

Sunset Dreams, 21, 277 ; 31, 68. 

Sunset Fancy, A, 12, no; 24, 198. 

Sunset in Autumn, 13, 34; 18, 200; 24, 441. 

Sunset on the River, 20, 194; 26, 446. 

Superstition, 19, 65; 24, 478. 

Swamp, The, 32, 98. 

Swamp-Led, 32, 97. 

Swashbuckler, The, 12, 115; 18, 247; 24, 361; 31, 296. 

Sweet of the Year, The, 2, 46; 6, 233; 22, 10. 

Swinging, 15, 61 ; The Old Swing, 24, 146. 

Sylvia of the Woodland ; see Julia. 

Symbolic, 9, 97; Tempest, 26, 99. 

Symphony, The; see Music — A Nocturne. 



Tabernacle, 20, 198; 26, 448. 

Take Heart, 33, 68. 

Tavern of the Bees, The, 32, 38; 35, 36. 

Tempest, 12, 122; 24, 246. 

Tempest; see Symbolic. 

Tempest, The, 32, 152. 

Temple of Night, The, 35, 209. 

Thamus, 7, 176; 22, 462. 

That Hour; see Immortal. 

That Night; see The Dream of Christ. 

That Night When I Came to the Grange, 28, 6. 

Then and Now, 13, 75; 24, 169. 

There are Fairies, 34, 71. 

There are Fairies; see A Melody. 

There was a Rose, 14, 102; My Rose, 23, 329. 

They Say, (to G.) 32, 165. See To Gertrude. 

This is the Face of Her; see Pictured. 

Thorn-Tree, The, 7, 1 1 1 ; 23, 205 ; 31, 40. 

Thou Hast not Loved Her, 3, 143. See Chords. 

Thought, A, 2, 122; Nepenthe, 26, 136. 

Thoughts, 4, 57; 8, 86; Pledges, 23, 315. 

503 



Madison C aw e i n 

Three Birds, 9, 119, 23, 393. 

Three Elements, The, 8, 94; 18, 255; 24, 352. 

Three Things, 17, 52 ; 24, 318. 

Three Urgandas, The, 3, 131; 8, iii; The Dream of Sir Galahad, 

22, 335- 
Threnody, A, 12, 30; 24, 193. 
Tiger-Lily, The, 2, 89; 25, 159; see Five Fancies. 
Time and Death and Love, 13, 40; 26, 227. 
Time to Get Up, 29, 149. 
To— .[To Lily]. 2, 153. 

To a Critic, (R.H.S.)— [Stoddard]. 14, 105; 24, 350. 
To a Pansy-Violet, 14, 90; 25, 307. 
To a Wind-Flower; see An Anemone. 
To Alice Monroe Pape; see Preludes and Epilogues (dd). 
To Autumn, 1, 104; 6, 58; October, 18, 52; Autumn, 24, 53. 
To Autumn, 9, 2; 24, 148. 
To Fall; see Fall. 
To Gertrude (Mrs. Cawein) ; see Preludes and Epilogues (u) and (x) ; 

see also They Say. 
To Harrison S. Morris; see Preludes and Epilogues (j). 
To James Whitcomb Riley; see Preludes and Epilogues (b); Old 

Bud Riley, 32, 163; Riley (his birthday, October 7, 1912), 36, 81. 
To Joaquin Miller; see Preludes and Epilogues (d). 
To John Fox, Jr; see On the Jellico-Spur. 
To Mary Elaine Cawein Gibson; see Baby Mary. 
To One Reading the Morte d'Arthure, 12, 1 1 1 ; 26s 213. 
To Preston (later Madison Cawein II) ; see Preludes and Epilogues (bb). 
To R. E. Lee Gibson; see Preludes and Epilogues (1). 
To Revery, 3, 82; Reverie, 8, i ; 18, loi ; 25, 230. 
To S. McK. [Samuel McKee, Jr.], 1, 23. 
To Sorrow, 1, 44; 6, 19; 18, 24; 24, 44. 
To Summer; see Summer. 

To the Leaf-Cricket, 19, 15; The Leaf-Cricket, 24, 384; 31, 185. 
To the Locust, 19, 36; 24, 396; The Locust, 31, 197. 
To W. T. H. Howe, 36, 3. 
Toad, The, 28, 246. 

Toad in the Skull, The; see The Heremite Toad. 
Toadstools, 29, 34. 

Toll-Man's Daughter, The, 1, 27; 6, 179; 18, 70; 23, 319. 
Tomboy, 29, 112. 

To-Morrow, 2, 69; World's Attainment, 26, 134. 
Tones, 12, 81 ; A Study in Gray, 25, 435. 
Too Late, 12, 74; 24, 238. 
Topsy Turvy, 29, 63. 
Torquemada, 7, 157; 22, 485. 
Torrent, The, 28, 248. 

504 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Toscar and Colmadona; see Imitated from Ossian. 

Touches, 17, 83; 24, 471. 

Touchstones, 33, 68. 

Town Witch, The, 28, 208. 

Toyland, 29, 9. 

Tramps, 28, 48. 

Transformation, 12, 17; 18, 243; 24, 359. 

Translated from the German ; see The White Snake and Other Poems. 

Transmutation, 11, 65; 18, 228; 24, 455. 

Transposed Seasons, 36, 46. 

Transubstantiation, 17, 44; 23, 368. 

Treachery, 1, 176; Venus of the Roses, 6, 159; Romaunt of the Roses, 

22, 468. 
Treasure, 28, 235. 
Treasure Trove, 34, 82. 

Tree-Toad, The, 17, 13; 24, 262; 31, 175; 35, 61. 
Trees, 28, 214. 

Trees and the Wind, The, 35, 222. 
Trial, 8, 94; 26, 258. 
Tried Friend, A True Friend, A 33, 79. 
Tristram and Isolt, 13, 46; 26, 231. 
Tristram to Isolt; see Lilith. 
Triumph of Music, From The, Morning and Night, 1, 25; Triumph of 

Music, 2, I ; 6, 183; The Valley of Music, 22, 90. 
Troglodyte, The, 11, 62; 26, 164. 
Troubadour, The, 2, 160; 6, 210; 22, 176. 
Troubadour, Pons De Capdeuil, The, 20, no; 26, 405. 
Troubadour of Trebizend, The, 36, 21. 
Tryst, The, 1, 92; 6, 37; 23, 276. 
Twilight; see Forest and Field. 
Twilight Moth, A, 17, 6; 18, 35; 24, 24; 31, 52. 
Twilight Witch, The, 35, 194. 
Two, 12, 80; Nymph and Faun, 25, 299. 
Two Birds, 32, 154. 
Two Days; see No More. 
Two Faeries and A Flower, 32, 90. 
Two Lives, 2, 62. 
Tyranny, 2, 31 ; 6, 256; 22, 76. 



Unanointed, 17, 22; 24, 290. 
Unanswered, 17, 85; 24, 463; 31, 295. 
Unattainable, 2, 51 ; Work, 33, 93. 
Unattainable, The, 11, 47; 26, 127. 
Uncalled, 19, 66; 24, 480; 31, 298. 

505 



Madison C aw e i n 

Uncertainty, 4, 31 ; 8, 49; 23, 280; 31, 113. 

Under Arcturus, 12, 25; 24, 188. 

Under Dark Skies, 9, 113; 25, 112. 

Under the Greenwood Tree, 4, 144; 16, 36. 

Under the Hunter's Moon, 19, 40; 24, 404. 

Under the Rose, 19, 48; 25, 367. 

Under the Stars and Stripes (May, 1898), 26, 279. 

Undertone, 11, 29; Autumn Sorrow, 24, 212; 31, 174. 

Unforgotten, 20, 248; 26, 467. 

Unfulfilled, 12, 83:2^,203. 

Unheard, 17, 28; 24, 298. 

Unimaginative, The, 8, 94; 18, 254; 24, 351. 

Unincouraged Aspiration, 11, 3; 26, 109. 

Universal Wind, The, 17, 61 ; 24, 327. 

Unmasked, 34, 90. 

Unqualified, 11, 3; 26, 108. 

Unrequited, 6, 9; 18, 92; 23, 394; 31, 50. 

Unsuccess, 20, 250; 26, 468. 

Unto What End, 20, 268 ; 26, 481 . 

Unutterable, 2, 74; 6, 225; 26, 138. 

Urganda, 7, 139; 22, 112. 



Vagabonds, 12, 31 ; Gypsying, 23, 278. 

Vagabonds, 20, 205; 26, 357. 

Vale of Tempe, The, 20, 77; 26, 350. 

Valentine, A, 13, 70; Witchcraft, 36, 45. 

Valkyrien, 4, 52; War-Song of Harold the Red, 22, 207. 

Valley of Music; see Triumph of Music. 

Vampire, The, 11, 54; 25, 100. 

Vengeance, 2, 90; The Moth, the Rose and the Pink, 25, 160., see 

Five Fancies. 
Venus of the Roses; see Treachery. 
Vespertime, 32, 99. 
Victory, 17, 60; 24, 325. 
Victory, 33, 57. 

Vikings, The, A Saga of Yule, 34, 77. 
Village Miser, The, 28, 209. 
Vindication, 28, 234. 
Vine and Sycamore, 19, 19; 25, 283. 
Vintager, The, 2, 71 ; 6, 260; 24, 21. 
Vision, A, 9, 122; The House of Death, 26, 192. 
Visions, 2, 32; 6, 275; The Sound of the Sap, 22, 36. 
Voice of April, The; see Call of April. 



506 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Voice of Ocean, The, 28, 159. 

Voice on the Wind, A, 19, i ; 24, 369; 31, 212. 

Voices, 17, 1 1 ; 24, 278. 

Voices, 28, 106. 

Voyagers, 7, 180; 25, 389; 31, 108. 



Waiting, 2, 23:6, 273; 22, 7. 

Waiting, 13, 23; Come to the Hills, 23, 512. 

Wanderer, 36, 60. 

Waning Year, The, 20, 215; 26, 454. 

War-Song of Harold the Red; see Valkyrien. 

War-Time Silhouettes, 23, 224; for earlier versions see The Battle; 

In Hospital; The Soldiers Return; The Apparition; Wounded; 

The Message; The Woman on the Hill (also In Silhouette). 
Wasteland, 34, 122. 
Watcher, The, 9, 145; 25, 415. 
Watcher on the Tower, The, 32, 254. 
Water- Fairy, The; see The Water-Maid. 
Water-Maid, The, 2, 98; 6, 293; The Water Fairy, 25, 154. 
Water-Witch, The, 14, 65, 23, 459. 
Waves, 28, 160. 

Were-Wolf, The, 11, 59; 25, 96. 
Were I an Artist; see Her Portrait. 
Wet Day, A, 20, 190; 26, 443. 
Wharves of Slumber, The, 35, 206. 
What Dreams may Come; see The Dream of Dread. 
What of It Then, 20, 225; 26, 458. 
What Little Things, 16, 82 ; 23, 85 ; 31, 47. 
What the Flowers Saw, 33, 32. 
What the Trees Said to the Little Boy, 29, 146. 
What You Will, 2, 10; 6, 249; 22, 77. 
Whatever the Path; see A Song of the Road. 
When Love Delays, 3, 141 ; 8, 88; 23, 382. See Chords. 
When Lydia Smiles, 15, 73. 
When She Draws Near; see Marie. 
When Ships Put Out to Sea, 15, 80; 23, 376. 
When Spring Comes Down the Wildwood Way; The Wildwood Way, 

21, 260. 
When the Wine-Cup at the Lip, 13, 42; 26, 161. 
When the Years were Young, 32, 230. 
When Things Go Wrong, 35, 128. 

Where and What. 2, 103; 6, 218; Yolanda of the Towers, 22, 121. 
Where the Battle Passed, 36, 73. 
Where the Gray Mists Whirl, 35, 220. 

507 



Madison C a w e i n 

Where the Path Leads, 32, 12; 35, 39. 

Wherefore, 14, 95; 26, 230. 

Which? 13, 32; 26, 224. 

Whippoorwill, The, 7, 193; 24, 94; 31, 58. 

Whippoorwill Time, 20, 59; 26, 362; 35, 21. 

White Evening, The, 1, 51 ; 6, 67; 24, 141. 

White Snake, The, and Other Poems Translated from the German. 
10 ; thirty-two poems : After Victor Hugo, 52 ; Babel, 68 ; Cavalier 
Rechberger, 25; Deceived, 64; Drinking Song, 73; Fatima, 33; 
Ferdusi, 59; The Forest Pool, 22; From Heine, 37; From the 
Jehuda Ben Halevy, 42; From the Second Part of Faust, 77; 
The Garden of Roses, 13; The Harvester, 65; Jussuf and Hafisa, 
50; The Maidens of Tifiis, 54; Messengers, 58; Mirza-Shaffy 
Sings, 48; The Night Journey, 36; The Nightingale and the Rose, 
46; An Old Story to a New Rhyme, 56; Palsgravine Jutta, 32; 
Revelation, 44; Romance, 24; The Statue of Bacchus, 20; 
Thoughts, 49; The Three Castles, 38; The Three Songs, 30; 
The Victor, 76; The White Snake, i ; The Wind's Bride, 16; Wine 
and Bread, 72; Zuleika, 47. For other translations see Spring; 
Kennst Du das Land. 

WhiteVigil,The, 12, 73;25, 433- 

Why? 2, 165:6,228; 23, 347. 

Why Should I Pine. 15, 72. 

Wild Iris, A, 17, i ; The Wild Iris, 24, 268; 31, 179. 

Wild-Thorn and Lily, 7, 7; 23, 122; 31, 8, 10. See also the Red Bird; 

O, May time Woods. 
Wildfiower, A, 32, 125. 
Wildwood Way, The; see When Spring Comes Down the Wildwood 

Way. 
Will-o'-the-Wisp, 11, 56; 25, 102. 
Will-o'-the-Wisps, 6, 7; 18, 67; 23, 333. 
Will You Forget? 15, 69; 23, 515. 
Willow Bottom, The, 11, 20; 24, 207. 
Willow Water, The, 20, 159; 26, 423. 
Willow Wood, 28, 93. 
Wind, The, 2, 146:6, 305; 24, 10. 
Wind and Cloud, A March Voluntary, 20, 11; 26, 296. 
Wind at Night, The, 12, 10; 24, 183. 
Wind from the Sea, The, 32, 100. 
Wind in the Pines, The, 15, 83: 24, 481. 
Wind of Spring, The, 35, 203. 
Wind of Spring, The, 11, 18; 24, 206; 31, 63. 
Wind of Summer, The, 19, 10; 24, 378. 
Wind of Winter, The, 19, 8 ; 24, 382 ; 31, 188. 
Wind Witch, The, 36, 27. 
Window on the Hill, The; see Home. 

508 



Index to Poems in Caweins Books 

Winds, The, 17, 82; 24, 470; 31, 285. 

Winter, 8, 21 ; 18, 238; 24, 356. 

Winter Days, 29, 161. 

Winter Dreams; see Strategy. 

Winter Moon, The, 12, 22; 24, 229. 

Winter Rain, 21, 280. 

Witch, The, 12, 116; 24, 239. 

Witch, The — A Miracle (a play), 30, 97. 

Witchcraft; see A Valentine, 

Witchery, 28, 60; 35, 93. 

With the Seasons, 2, 48; 6, 235; 22, 73. 

With the Tide; see Once. 

With the Wind, 28, 172. 

Witnesses, 14, 94; 23, 310. 

Woman, The, 36, 83. 

Woman by the Water, The; see The Secret. 

Woman of the World, A; see Before the Ball. 

Woman on the Hill, The; see In Silhouette. 

Woman on the Road, A (a one-act play), 32, 195. 

Woman or — What? (a prose sketch), 21, 287. 

Woman Speaks, The, 17, 84; 24, 467. 

Womanhood, 20, 228; 26, 461 ; 31, 26. 

Woman's Love, 20, 234; 26, 373. 

Woman's Portion, 12, 95; 25, 78. 

Wood, The, 11, 4; 24, 200. 

Wood Anemone, The, 34, 46. 

Wood Brook, The, 33, 23. 

Wood Dreams, 34, 15. 

Wood Girl, The, 35, 216. 

Wood God, The, 34, 36. 

Wood God, The; see Genius Loci. 

Wood Myths, 28, 176. 

Wood Notes, 11, 5; 24, 202. 

Wood Path, The, 2, 38; 6, 289; 22, 34. 

Wood Spirit, The, 7, 103; 23, 197. 

Wood Spirit, The, 35, 171. 

Wood Stream, The, 32, 115. 

Wood Thrush, The, 21, 204; 35, 143. 

Wood Thrush, The, 21, 167; The Song of the Thrush, 24, 454. 

Wood Thrush, The, 28, 73; 35, 109. 

Wood Water, The, 20, 180; 26, 388. 

Wood-Ways, 21, 272. 

Wood Witch, The, 11, 14; 18, 189; 24, 436; 35, 106. 

Wood-Words, 12, 7; 24, 178. 

Woodland Grave; see A Lament. 

Woodland Waterfall, The, 34, 39. 

509 



Madison C a w e i n 

Woodland Waters, 7, 109; 23, 203. 

Woods and Waters, (thirteen poems), 32, 95. 

Woolworth Building, The ; see New York Skyscraper. 

Word in the Wood, The, 20, 177; 26, 436. 

Words, 15, 66; 23, 345. 

Work; see Unattainable. 

World of Faery, The, 20, 141, 25, 125. 

World's Attainment; see To-Morrow. 

World's Desire, The, 11, 46; 26, 126. 

Worm and Fly, 32, 117. 

Worship, 17, 27; 24, 297. 

Wounded, 7, 129; see War-Time Silhouettes. 

Wreckage, 7, 70; 23, 209. 



Yarrow, The, 28, 86. 

Years Wherein I Never Knew, The, 17, 42. 

Yellow Puccoon (a wild flower), 34, 109. 

Yellow Rose, A, 20, 67; 26, 360. 

Yolanda of the Towers; see Where and What. 

Young September, 19, 38; 24, 19. 

Youth, 3, 139; 15, 56; 26, 175. See Chords. 

Yule, 2, 155; 6, 221; 22, 209. 



Zero, 20, 261 ; 26, 474. 
Zypsof Zirl, 15, 38; 25, 355. 



510 



c. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES 

Some Reviews of Each of Cawein's Books 
Articles and Comments on Cawein's Life and Works 
Anthologies Containing Poems by Cawein 
Encyclopedias Treating Cawein as a Subject 
Published Songs — Words by Cawein 

The following lists cite a comparatively small portion of the 
matter in print pertaining to the life and the works of Madison 
Cawein. More than three hundred reviews and other articles appear 
in the Louisville papers alone. Articles here cited are confined to 
the ones selected from among those found in books, monthly and 
weekly publications, the Neiv York Times Review of Books, The 
Boston Evening Transcript and the Louisville dailies. All items are 
arranged in chronological order; those marked Reprinted are re- 
printed in this volume, beginning on the page indicated. 

Some Reviews of Each of Cawein's Books 

1. Blooms of the Berry. 

Courier-Journal, Louisville, November ii, 1887 [the first published 

review of Mr. Cawein's first book] ; 200 words. 
Harper's Monthly, New York, May, 1888, Editor's Study, by William 

Dean Howells. 100 words. 
Atlantic Monthly [Thomas Bailey Aldrich], Boston, June 1888; 100 

words. 

2. The Triumph of Music. 

Harper's Monthly, New York, September, 1888, Editor's Study, 

by William Dean Howells; 11 00 words. 
Atlantic Monthly, Boston, September, 1888; 100 words. 

511 



Madison Cawein 

3. AccoLON OF Gaul. 

Atlantic Monthly, Boston, July, 1889; 100 words. 
Harper's Monthly, New York, September, 1889, Editor's Study, by 
William Dean Howells; 700 words. 

4. Lyrics and Idyls. 

Critic, New York, July 26, 1890; 500 words. 

Poet-Lore, Boston, August 15, 1890, Recent American Poetry, 
by Helen A. Clark; 800 words. 

5. Days and Dreams. 

Independent, New York, November 5, 1891 ; 700 words. 
Harper's Monthly, Boston, January, 1892, Editor's Study, by 
William Dean Howells; 300 words. 

6. Moods and Memories. 

Literary World, Boston, July 16, 1892; 500 words. 
Critic, New York, October 29, 1892; 300 words. 

7. Red Leaves and Roses. 
Courier-Journal, Louisville, April 15, 1893; 1000 words. 
Louisville Sunday Star, June 12, 1894, by Charles Hamilton Musgrove; 

1500 words. 
Literary World, London, September 15, 1893; 200 words. 

8. Poems of Nature and Love. 
Speaker, London, December 2, 1893; 300 words. 
Atlantic Monthly, Boston, February, 1894; 200 words. 

9. Intimations of the Beautiful. 

Literary World, Boston, December i, 1894; 200 words. 
Atlantic Monthly, Boston, October, 1895; 100 words. 

10. The White Snake. 

Independent, New York, February 6, 1896; 100 words. 
Critic, New York, October 31, 1896; 300 words. 

11. Undertones. 

Nation, New York, June 4, 1896; 200 words. 

Pall Mall Magazine, London, August, 1898, Recent American Verse, 
by William Archer; 300 words. 

12. The Garden of Dreams. 

Outlook, New York, January 2, 1897; 100 words. 

Pall Mall Gazette, London, December 14, 1897; 800 words, 

13. Shapes and Shadows. 

Outlook, New York, May 7, 1898; 300 words. 

Dial, Chicago, September i, 1898, by W. M. Payne; 200 words. 

512 



Bibliographical References 

14. Idyllic Monologues. 
Courier-Journal, Louisville, May 21, 1898; 1200 words. 
Poet-Lore, Boston, Last Quarter, 1898; 400 words. 

15. Myth and Romance. 

Literature, New York, August 25 and September i, 1899, Southwest 
and Northwest in Recent Verse, by William Dean Howells; 
1300 words. 

Dial, Chicago, October i, 1899; 400 words. 

16. One Day and Another. 

Dial, Chicago, October i, 1901, by W. M. Payne; 400 words. 

17. Weeds by the Wall. 

Louisville Times, June i, 1901, by Isaac F. Marcosson; iioo words. 
North American Review, New York, January, 1902, Some New 
Volumes of Verse, by William Dean Howells; 700 words. 

18. Kentucky Poems. 

Academy and Literature, London, September 13, 1902; 600 words. 

Athenaeum, London, November i, 1902; 500 words. 

Philadelphia Public Ledger, November 30, 1902; A Disciple of Keats, 
by John Russell Hayes; 1000 words. Reprinted in Book-Lover, 
New York, March-April, 1903; and in his Brandywine Days, 
Philadelphia, 1910. 

19. A Voice on the Wind. 

Courier-Journal, Louisville, November 22, 1902, by Elizabeth Cherry 

Waltz; 800 words. 
Critic, New York, March, 1903; 200 words. 

20. The Vale of Tempe. 

Mirror, St. Louis, October 26, 1905, by Ernest McGaffey; 1000 words. 
Reader Magazine, Indianapolis, November, 1905; 700 words. 

21. Nature Notes and Impressions. 

Evening Post, Louisville, August 26, 1906, an editorial; 1600 words. 
Outlook, New York, October 6, 1906; 200 words. 
New York Times, October 6, 1906, by Jessie B. Rittenhouse; iioo 
words. 

22-26. The Poems of Madison Cawein, 5 Volumes. 
Evening Post, Louisville, December 5, 1907, an editorial, A Complete 

Edition of Cawein's Poems; 900 words. 
Louisville Times, December 21, 1907. Our Melodious Kentucky 

Thrush in Full Serenade, by Anna Blanche McGill; 2500 words. 
North American Review, New York, January, 1908, The Poetry of 

Mr. Madison Cawein, by William Dean Howells; 1800 words. 

Reprinted, in 191 1, as Foreword to Poems by Madison Cawein. 

Reprinted, page 358. 

513 



Madison C aw e i n 

27. An Ode * * * Massachusetts Bay Colony. 
Courier-Journal, Louisville, April 4, 1908; 200 words. 

Book News, Philadelphia, June, 1908; 200 words. 

28. New Poems. 

The Mirror, St. Louis, February 24, 1910, by William Marion Reedy; 

400 words. 
The Thrush, London, December, 1909; 200 words. 

29. The Giant and the Star. 

Bookman, New York, January, 1910, Recent Volumes of Verse, by 

Brian Hooker; 500 words. 
New York Times, February 26, 1910, Some New Poems by Madison 

Cawein, by Jessie B. Rittenhouse; 1300 words. 

30. The Shadow Garden. 
Courier-Journal, Louisville, May 7, 1910; 1000 words. 
Boston Transcript, June 29, 1910, by R. T. P.; 800 words. 

3L Poems by Madison Cawein. 
Courier-Journal, October 7, 191 1 ; 1200 words. 
Boston Transcript, November 4, 191 1; 1000 words. 
New York Times, February 11, 1912; 800 words. 
The Bellman, Minneapolis, January 13, 1912, by Richard Burton; 

400 words. 

32. The Poet, the Fool and the Faeries. 

American Review of Reviews, New York, March, 1913; 300 words. 
Louisville Herald, May 19, 1913, by S. J. Duncan-Clark; 1500 words. 

33. The Republic. 

Courier-Journal, Louisville, May 31, 1913; 900 words. 
Boston Transcript, July 30, 191 3; 400 words. 

34. Minions of the Moon. 

Evening Post, Louisville, December 20, 1913, by Margaret Steele 

Anderson; 800 words. 
American Review of Reviews, New York, December, 1913; 100 words. 

35. The Poet and Nature and the Morning Road. 

New York Times, January 3, 1915, by Jessie B. Rittenhouse; 1000 

words. 
Boston Transcript, January 20, 1915; 400 words. 

36. The Cup of Comus. 

Literary Digest, New York, December 11, 1915; 700 words. 
New York Times, March 26, 1916; 700 words. 

514 



Bibliographical References 



Articles and Comments on Cawein's Works; 
ALSO Biographical Sketches 

Courier-Journal, Louisville, June 12, 1886. Commencement Exer- 
cises. Reprinted page 82. 
Louisville Commercial. June 12, 1886. Commencement Exer- 
cises. Reprinted page 82. 
Louisville Commercial, September 18, 1887. A Louisville Poet. 

His first book. Reprinted page 82. 
Courier-Journal. Louisville, August 26, 1888. Some Recent 

Poetry. Reprinted, page 85. 
Louisville Commercial. January 27, 1889. A Poet's Life, by Walter 

N. Burns. Reprinted page 86. 
The Author. Boston, April 5, 1890. Madison J. Cawein, by Elvira 

Sydnor Miller. 
The Critic, New York, July 26, 1890. Two items. 
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly. New York, March 23, 1893. 

Literary Celebrities of Louisville, by Sara H. Henton. 
Sewanee Review. Sewanee, Tennessee, May, 1893. A Southern 

Poet, by William Norman Guthrie. 
Fetter's Southern Magazine, September, 1893. A Plea for Kentucky 

Poets, by John L. Patterson. 
Fetter's Southern Magazine. Louisville, December, 1893. Books 

and Writers, by T. E. Spencer. 
Courier-Journal, Louisville, January 21, 1894. ^ Louisville Poet. 

Reprinted page 93. 
Memorial History of Louisville. By /. Stoddard Johnston. Chicago, 

1896. Volume n. Page 82. 
Louisville Times, March 24, 1897. The Tattler Column, Joaquin 

Miller, the Picturesque Poet. 
Courier-Journal, Louisville, October 5, 1897. Henry Clay's Mother. 

Reprinted, page 96. 
The Arena. Trenton, New Jersey, October, 1897. A Bard of the 

Ohio, by John Clark Ridpath. 
Midland Monthly, Des Moines, Iowa, December, 1897. Kentucky in 

Recent Literature, by Leigh Gordon Giltner. 
Pall Mall Magazine. London, August, 1898. Recent American 

Verse, by William Archer. 
Literature. New York, September 24, 1898. The Southern States 

in Recent American Literature, by William Dean Howells. 
Louisville Times, April 11, 1899. Queer Club Formed. Reprinted 

page 97. 
North American Review. New York, May, 1899. The New Poetry, 

by William Dean Howells. 

515 



Madison C aw e i n 

The Hesperian, a Western Quarterly Magazine, St. Louis, January- 
March, 1900. The Poetry of Madison Cawein, by R. E. Lee Gibson. 
The Independent. New York, November 22, 1900. A Literary 

Journey, by Maurice Thompson. 
Courier- Journal. Louisville, January 2^, 1901. Madison Cawein, 

by Elizabeth Cherry Waltz. Reprinted page 98. 
North American Review. New York, January, 1901. A Hundred 

Years of American Verse, by William Dean Howells. 
Conservative Review. Washington, September, 1901. Sidney Lanier, 

by Glen Levin Swiggett. 
The Academy [and Literature] London, October 26, 1901. Above 

Average. 
The Academy and Literature, London, September 13, 1902. 

A Kentucky Poet. 
Brandywine Days. By John Russell Hayes. Philadelphia, 1910. 

A Disciple of Keats. Pages 192-195. Reprinted from Book- 
Lover, March-April 1903; originally published in Public Ledger, 

Philadelphia, November 30, 1902. 
Kentucky Poems; The Introduction by Edmund Gosse. London, 1902. 

Reprinted as The Introduction to The Poems of Madison 

Cawein, 1907. Reprinted page 2,54. 
The Poets of the Younger Generation. By William Archer. London, 

1902. Madison Cawein, pages 83-91. 
Courier-Journal. Louisville, June 5, 1903. McKelvey-Cawein 

Wedding. Reprinted page \o^. 
Louisville Times. February 7, 1903. A Kentucky Man of Letters, by 

Elvira S. Miller. Reprinted page 102. 
Poet Lore. Boston, Winter Number, 1903. Madison Cawein. 
Southern Writers. By William Malone Baskerville. Nashville, 1903 

and 191 1. Volume II, Chapter X: Madison Cawein, by William 

Henry Hulme. 
The Younger American Poets. By Jessie B. Rittenhouse. Boston, 

1904; 1913. Madison Cawein, Pages 177-195. 
The Outlook. New York, August 12, 1905. E. A. Robinson's The 

Children of the Night, reviewed by Theodore Roosevelt. 
New York Times. September 16, 1905. Mr. Cawein's Poetry. 
Kentucky in History and Literature. By John Wilson Townsend. 

New York, 1907. Has Kentucky Produced a Poet? Pages 

135-152. Reprinted from Kentucky State Historical Society 

Register, Frankfort, January, 1906. 
South Atlantic Quarterly. Durham, North Carolina, October, 1906. 

The Poetry of Madison Cawein, by Anna Blanche McGill. 
A History of Southern Literature. By Carl Holliday. New York, 1906. 

Pages 371, 372. 
The South in History and Literature. By Mildred Lewis Rutherford. 

Athens, Georgia, 1906. Madison Cawein. Pages 676-680. 

516 



Bibliographical References 

Evening Post. Louisville, December 5, 1907. Editorial, A Complete 

Edition of Cawein's Poems. 
Louisville Times. December 21, 1907. Our Melodious Kentucky 

Thrush in Full Serenade, by Anna Blanche McGill. 
North American Review. New York, January, 1908. The Poetry of 

Mr. Madison Cawein, by William Dean Howells. Reprinted as 

Preface to Poems by Madison Cawein, 191 1. Reprinted page 358. 
Humanity. St. Louis, March, 1908. Madison Cawein, An Apprecia- 
tion, by Edwin Carty Ranck. 
Courier-Journal. Louisville, November 14, 1908. The Louisville 

Literary Club. Reprinted page 105. 
Library of Southern Literature. Edited by C. W. Kent. Atlanta, 1908. 

Volume II, Pages 785-789, Madison Julius Cawein, by Hurbert 

Gibson Shearin. 
Courier-Journal. Louisville, June 12, 1909. The Poetry of Madison 

Cawein, by Leigh Gordon Giltner. 
The Bookseller, London, July 9, 1909. American Notes. 
The South in the Building of the Nation. Richmond, 1909. Southern 

Poetry since the War of Secession, by Edwin Minis, Volume VII, 

Pages 52-54. Madison J. Cawein, Volume XI, Pages 185-186. 
Courier-Journal, Louisville, January 29, 1910. As Others See Mr. 

Cawein. 
The Outlook. New York, July 23, 1910. English Song Birds, by 

Theodore Roosevelt. 
Louisville Herald. October 2, 1910. Madison Cawein, A Poet and A 

Human Man, Hortense Flexner. Reprinted page 107. 
The Literature of the South. By Montrose J. Moses. New York, 1910. 

Page 472. 
Life and Letters of Edmund Clarence Stedman. By Laura Stedman 

and George M. Gould. New York, 19 10, Volume II, Pages 369 

and 370. 
Courier-Journal. Louisville, March 4, 191 1. Mr. Cawein's Poetry, 

by Mark H. Liddell. 
Courier-Journal, Louisville, June 24, 191 1. Anthology of Love 

Poems {The Book of Love), Mr. Cawein's Preface. 
New York Times, December 3, 191 1. Dr. Van Dyke in His Many 

Keys. 
Louisville Herald. November 28, 191 1. Madison Cawein Thinks 

Nicholaus Lenau Ranks Next to Heine. Reprinted page 113. 
History of American Literature. By Reuben Post Halleck. New York, 

191 1. Pages 332-334. 
Ladies Home Journal, Philadelphia, March, 1912. Are the Latest 

Poets Worth Reading, by Hamilton W. Mabie. 
Louisville Times. March 26, 1912. Poet is Honored by Many 

Friends. Reprinted page 112, ■ 



517 



Madison C aw e i 



n 



Louisville Herald. March 27, 1912. A Happy Occasion. Reprinted 

page 115. 
Poetry Review. London, October, 1912. Modern American Poetry, 

by Harriet Monroe. Poetry of Madison Cawein and Percy 

Mackaye. Personal Notes on Some Recent American Poetry, 

by Harold Monro. 
New York Times, November 17, 1912. Verse and Vacuity, by 

Shaemas O'Sheel. A Reply, by Madison Cawein. 
New York Times, December i, 1912. Defending Mr. Cawein, by 

Jessie B. Rittenhouse, Courier-Journal, December 7, 1912. 
History of Kentucky and Kentuckians. By E. Polk Johnson. Chicago, 

191 2. Volume II, Pages 669-670. 
Louisville Herald. April 26, 1913. Many See Cawein Bust Unveiled 

in Library. Reprinted page 116. 
Courier-Journal. Louisville, April 26, 1913. Mr. Cawein in 

Bronze. Reprinted page 118. 
Kentucky in American Letters. By John Wilson Townsend. Cedar 

Rapids, Iowa, 1913. Madison Cawein, Volume II, Pages 187-198. 
Southern Literary Readings, Edited with * * * Biographical 

Sketches. By Leonidas Warren Payne, Jr. Chicago, 1913. 

Madison Cawein, Pages 385-396. 
The Life of Francis Thompson. By Everad Meynell. New York, 1913. 

Pages 268, 269. 
Louisville Herald. April 14, 1914. Interest in Poetry Increasing. 

Reprinted page 119. 
Review and Expositor, A Baptist Theological Quarterly. Louisville, 

October, 1914. The Practical Value of Poetry, by E. Y. Mullins. 
Louisville Times. December 4, 1914. Madison Cawein Seriously 

Stricken. Reprinted page 138. 
Louisville Herald. December 7, 1914. Serious Illness of Madison 

Cawein. Reprinted page 139. 
Courier-Journal. Louisville, December 8, 1914. Madison Cawein 

Answers Call. Reprinted page 139. 
Louisville Times. December 8, 1914. Madison Cawein. Reprinted 

page 143. 
Louisville Post. December 8, 1914. The Death of Madison 

Cawein. Reprinted page 144. 
Courier-Journal. Louisville, December 9, 1914. Madison Cawein. 

Reprinted page 145. 
Louisville Herald. December 10, 1914. Pay Last Tribute in Simple 

Service. Reprinted page 146. 
Courier-Journal. Louisville, December 11, 1914. Will Bequeaths 

Bulk of Estate to Widow. Reprinted page 148. 
Louisville Herald. December 11, 1914. Madison Cawein's Last 

Volume Will be Released Today. Reprinted page 147. 



518 



Bibliographical References 

Courier-Journal. Louisville, December 15, 1914. Eulogy on Poet. 

Reprinted page 148. 
The Nation. New York, December 17, 1914. A Western Nature 

Poet. Reprinted page 1 5^. 
New York Times. December 18, 1914. Topics of the Week. Review 

of Books. Reprinted page 153. 
Louisville Post. December 18, 1914. Cawein's Death Due to 

Apoplexy. Reprinted page 1 51 . 
Boston Transcript. December 19, 1914. The Impress Left Upon 

American Literature. Reprinted page 155. 
Athenaeum. London, December 26, 1914. Mr. Madison Cawein's 

Death. Reprifited page i $8. 
Courier-Journal. Louisville, December 27, 1914. Cawein Path and 

Bridge. Repriyited page 1^2. 
American Literature. By John Calvin Metcalf. Richmond, 1914. 

Pages 304-306. 
Poetry Society of America, Bulletin. New York, December 1914. On 

the Death of Mr. Cawein. Reprinted page 158. 
A December Dirge, Threefold. Lexington, 1914. A Maker of Verse, 

by George Douglass Sherley. 
The Dial, Chicago, January i, 191 5. Death of Madison Cawein. 

Reprinted page 159. 
Collier's Weekly. New York, January 2, 1915. Kentucky Has Lost 

Her Poet. Reprinted page 160. 
Poetry — A Magazine of Verse. Chicago, January, 1915. The Death 

of Madison Cawein. Reprinted page 160. 
The Writer's Bulletin. New York, January, 1915. Madison Cawein 

Has Left Us. Reprinted page 161. 
Current Opinion. New York, February, 1915. The Passing of Cawein. 
Methodist Review, Bi-monthly. New York, May-June, 1915. The 

Departure of America's Native Singer, by A. W. Armstrong. 
Texas Review. Austin, June, 1915. In Illustration of Madison 

Cawein's Poetry, by James Finch Royster. 
South Atlantic Quarterly. Durham, North Carolina, July, 1915. 

Madison Cawein, by H. Houston Peckham; Reprinted page 362. 

See Peckham's Present-Day American Poetry and Other Essays, 

1917. 
Sewanee Review. Sewanee, Tennessee, October, 1915. The Other 

Madison Cawein, by Anna Blanche McGill. Reprinted page 366. 
Lexington Herald. Lexington, Kentucky, November 4, 1915. The 

True Madison Cawein, by John Wilson Townsend. 
A History of American Literature Since 1870. By Fred Lewis Pattee. 

New York, 191 5. Pages 322, 346-351, 354. 
The Bellman. Minneapolis, August 12, 1916. Cawein and Riley, by 

Henry Adams Bellows. Reprinted page 376. 



519 



Madison C aw e i n 

The Catholic World. New York, March, 191 7. The Poor Step-Dame — 
Some Consideration of the Poetry of the Late Madison Cawein, 
by Joyce Kilmer. 

Kentucky Magazine. Mount Sterling, August, 1917. Madison 
Cawein and Kindred Souls, by Bert Finck. In this volume the 
title is changed to Cawein and Some of His Kentucky Friends. 
Reprinted page 382. 

American Literary Readings. By Leonidas Warren Payne, Jr. Chi- 
cago, 1917. Page 121. 

Present-Day American Poetry and Other Essays. By H. Houston 
Peckham. Boston, 1917. The first and sixth Essays reprinted 
from South Atlantic Quarterly, Durham, North Carolina: 
Present-Day American Poetry; July, 1912; Madison Cawein, 
July, 1915. 

Journal of Education. Boston, August 29, 1918. Authors who are 
a Present Delight — Madison Cawein, by Nathan Haskell Dole. 

American Authorship of the Present-Day. By T. E. Rankin. Ann 
Arbor, 1918, Pages 70, 78, 106. 

A Short History of American Literature. By Walter C. Bronson. 
New York, 1919. Pages 326-327. 

History of American Literature. By Leonidas Warren Payne, Jr. 
Chicago, 1919. Pages 288, 289. 

Adventures in Interviewing. By Isaac F. Marcosson. New York, 1920. 
Page 272. 



Anthologies Containing Poems by Cawein 

A Library of American Literature. By Stedman and Hutchinson. 

New York, 1891. Volume XI. Disenchantment of Death. 
Blades of Bluegrass. By Fannie Porter Dickey. Louisville, 1892. 

Chords [When Love Delays]; Andalia; Noera. 
Southern Literature from 1579 to 1895. By Louise Manly. Richmond, 

1895. The Whippoorwill. 
Poems of American Patriotism 1776- 1898. By R. L. Paget. Boston, 

1898. Under the Stars and Stripes; "Mene, Mene, Tekel, 

Upharsin." 
Through the Year with Birds and Poets. By Sarah Williams. Boston, 

1900. The Rain-Crow. 
An American Anthology, 1 787-1900. By Edmund Clarence Stedman. 

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1900. Proem [to Myth and Ro- 
mance], The Rain-Crow; To A Wind-Flower; Death; The Soul; 

The Creek-Road; Ku Klux; Quatrains: The Wind in the Pines; 

Opportunity; Comradery; Flight; Dirge: What Shall Her Silence 

Keep? 

520 



Bibliographical References 

The Hesperian Tree. Cincinnati. By John James Piatt. 1900: Along 
the Stream. 1903: War-Time Silhouettes. 

The Poets of the Younger Generation. By William Archer. London, 
1902. Myth and Romance; May; Meeting in Summer; Trans- 
mutation; Old Homes; A Song in Season. 

Library of the World's Best Literature. Charles Dudley Warner, 
Editor, New York, 1902. Volume 40, Carmen. Volume 41, 
Strollers; A Threnody. 

Werner's Readings and Recitations, No. 31: Hallowe'en Festivities. 
By Stanley Schell. New York, 1903. Hallowe'en. 

The World's Best Poetry. Bliss Carmen, Editor-in-Chief. Phila- 
delphia, 1904. Volume VI, Proem [to Myth and Romance]. 

Beautiful Thoughts of Noble Men. By Mrs. Belle Thornton Dick. 
Louisville, 1905. Mid-Winter; A Catch. 

Southern Writers — Selections in Prose and Verse. By William Peter- 
field Trent. New York, 1905; 1919. Wood-Words; Rain and 
Wind; Rest; Hearts' Encouragement; Love and a Day; Re- 
quiescat; Beauty and Art. 

Golden Poems by British and American Authors. By Francis Fisher 
Browne. Chicago, 1906. To A Wind-Flower. 

Kentucky Eloquence. By Bennett H. Young. Louisville, 1907. A 
Twilight Moth. 

Poems of American History, By Burton Egbert Stevenson. Boston, 
1908. Mosby at Hamilton; Ku-Klux; "Mene, Mene, Tekel, 
Upharsin." 

Three Centuries of Southern Poetry. By Carl Holliday. Nashville, 
1908. The Whippoorwill ; Disenchantment of Death; Love and a 
Day. 

Library of Southern Literature. Atlanta, 1908. Volume H. Over- 
seas; The Ride; Carmen; War-Time Silhouettes; After Rain; 
Evening on the Farm; July; The Old Spring; The End of 
Summer; In the Lane; A Maid Who Died Old; Fall; There are 
Fairies; Hymn to Desire; The Rue-Anemone; Intimations of 
the Beautiful, 18 lines; Bertrand de Born; The Moonmen; The 
Man Hunt. Selected by Hubert G. Shearin. 

Arbor Day (Our American Holidays Series). By Robert Haven 
Schauffler. New York, 1909. The Wind in the Pines; To A 
Windflower. 

Southern Prose and Poetry for Schools. Edwin Mims and Bruce R. 
Payne. New York, 1910. The Whippoorwill. 

American History by American Poets. By Nellie Urner Wallington. 
Volume 11. New York, 191 1. Mosby at Hamilton; Ku-Klux. 

The Speaker, a Quarterly Magazine. New York, 191 1. Volume VI, 
No. 22. Dead Man's Run. . 



521 



Madison Cawein 

The Humbler Poets: A Collection of Newspaper and Periodical 
Verse 1885 to 1910. By Wallace and Frances Rice. Chicago, 

191 1. Love and a Day. 

The Book of Love. By Jessie Reid. New York, 191 1. The Call 
of the Heart. 

A Study in Southern Poetry. By Henry Jerome Stockard. New 
York, 191 1. A Twilight Moth; The Tree Toad; Drouth; Before 
the Rain; Feud; The Man in Gray; Enchantment; Caverns. 

The Dixie Book of Days. By Matthew Page Andrews. Philadelphia, 

1912. Fall [To Fall]; and three short quotations. 

Flag Day (Our American Holidays Series). By Robert Haven Schaiif- 

fler. New York, 1912. Under the Stars and Stripes. 
American Lyrics. By Edith Rickert and Jessie Paton. New York, 

1912. The Whippoorwill ; On the Farm. 
Masterpieces of the Southern Poets. By Walter Neale. New York, 

1912. Attributes; Beautiful-Bosomed, O Night; Hymn to 

Spiritual Desire. 
The Lyric Year, One Hundred Poems. By Ferdinand Earle. New 

York, 1912. The Voice of April [The Call of April]. 
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1913. By William Stanley Braith- 

waite. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1913. The Speckled Trout. 
Songs of the South. By Jennie Thornley Clarke. New York, 191 3. 

The Eve of All-Saints. 
Southern Poems — The Riverside Literature Series. By Charles W. 

Kent. Boston, 1913. The Whippoorwill; Evening on the Farm. 
The Little Book of Modern Verse. Jessie B. Rittenhouse. New 

York, 191 3. Here is the Place Where Loveliness Keeps House; 

The Path to the Woods; Under Arcturus. 
Kentucky in American Letters. By John Wilson Townsend. Cedar 

Rapids, Iowa, 1913. Volume H. Conclusion; Indian Summer; 

Home; Love and a Day; In a Shadow Garden; Unrequited; A 

Twilight Moth. 
Southern Literary Readings. By Leonidas Warren Payne, Jr., 

Chicago, 1913. The Old Water-Mill; Seasons; Sounds and 

Sights; Zyps of Zirl, 
The Changing Year. By John R. Howard. New York, 1913. Proem 

[to Myth and Romance]. 
Heart Throbs. By /. M. Chappie. New York, 1914. Unheard. 
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1914. By William Stanley Braith- 

waite. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1914. At the End of the 

Road. 
Readings From Literature. By R. P. Halleck and E. G. Barbour. 

New York, 1915. The Whippoorwill. 
The Little Book of American Poets. By Jessie B. Rittenhouse. New 

York, 1915. Ku Klux; The Rain-Crow. 



522 



Bibliograf)hical References 

All That's Kentucky. By Josiah H. Combs. Louisville, 191 5. 
Kentucky; Bryan's Station; The Feud; The Mountain 
Still; Song of the Night-Rider; The Battleship Kentucky; 
This is Kentucky (four lines). 

The Dixie Calendar for 1916. By Matthew Page Andrews. Balti- 
more, 1916. Dedicated to Madison Cawein. Some Reckon 
Time by Stars; March; Revealment; Paths; In May. 

High Tide — Songs of Joy and Vision from the Present-day Poets of 
America and Great Britain. By Mrs. Waldo Richards. Boston, 
1916. Aubade (Morning Serenade); The Magic Purse; A Road 
Song; Morning-Glories. 

The Book of New York Verse. By Hamilton Fish Armstrong. New 
York, 1 91 7. The Woolworth Building, the New York Skyscraper. 

Southern Life in Southern Literature. By Maurice Garland Fulton. 
Boston, 191 7. The Whippoorwill ; Evening on the Farm. 

A Book of Lines. By /. Leonard Carrico. Notre Dame, Indiana, 191 7. 
Meeting in Summer. 

The Home Book of Verse, American and English, 1 580-1 91 8. By 
Burton E. Stevenson. New York, 191 8. Ballad of Low- Lie- 
Down; Enchantment; Here is the Place Where Loveliness Keeps 
House; The Miracle of the Dawn; The Old Home; To a 
Windflower. 

The Melody of Earth. By Mrs. Waldo Richards. Boston, 1918. 
Old Homes; In An Old Garden. 

The Message of the Trees, an Anthology of Leaves and Branches. 
By Maud Cuney Hare. Boston, 1918. The Wood God; The 
Thorn-Tree. 

Century Readings for a Course in American Literature. By Fred Lewis 
Pattee. New York, 1919. In the Shadow of the Beeches. 

The Bellman Book of Verse. By William C. Edgar. Minneapolis, 
1 919. The Speckled Trout; At the End of the Road; The Closed 
Book [The Closed Door]; A Ghost of Yesterday; Stormy Sunset 
[Autumn Equinox]; The Old Dreamer; On the Road. 

Modern American Poetry. By Louis Untermeyer. New York, 1919. 
Deserted; The Man Hunt. 

Homage to Robert Browning. By Aleph Tanner. The Baylor 
University Bulletin, Waco, Texas, January, 1920. Robert 
Browning. 

Modern Literature for Oral Interpretation. By Gertrude E. Johnson. 
New York, 1920. A Path to the Woods. 

The Haunted Hour. By Margaret Widdemer. New York, 1920, 
Ghosts. 



523 



Madison Cawein 



Encyclopedias Treating Cawein As a Subject 

National Cyclopedia of American Biography, 1898. 

Who's Who in America. Volume I, 1899- 1900, to Volume VIII, 

1914-1915. 
Lamb's Biographical Dictionary of the United States, 1900. 
New International Encyclopedia, 1902. 
Encyclopedia Americana, 1903, 1906, 1912, 1918. 
Anglo-American Cyclopedia, 1906. 
Nelson's Encyclopedia, 1906. 

United Editors Encyclopedia and Dictionary, 1909. 
New Standard Encyclopedia, 191 1. 
Funk and Wagnalls' Standard Encyclopedia, 1912. 
Standard American Encyclopedia, 1916. 
World Book, Organized Knowledge in Story and Picture, 1918. 



Published Songs — Words by Cawein 

Apart; Music by Mildred J. Hill. Published by Arthur P. Schmidt, 

Boston, 1898. 
Some Reckon Time by Stars; Music by James H. Rogers. Published 

by G. Schirmer, New York, 1910. 
Riddles [from Problems]; Music by Stephen Storace. In The New 

Normal Music Course — Book Two. Published by Silver, Bur- 

dett & Company, Boston, 191 1. 
When Ships Put Out To Sea; Music by Paul Ambrose. Published by 

Oliver Ditson Company, Boston, 1912. 
A Memory; Music by G. Marshal-Loepke. Published by Boston 

Music Company, Boston, 1912. 
Aubade; Music by Emma Hanson Bartmess. Published by C. W. 

Thompson & Company, Boston, 1913. 
Sunset Dreams; Music by Emma Hanson Bartmess. Published by 

C. W. Thompson & Company, Boston, 1915. 
April; Music by Vivian Burnett. Published by G. Schirmer, New 

York, 1 91 7. 
Under the Stars and Stripes; Music by Frederick S. Converse. Pub- 
lished by C. C. Birchard & Company, Boston, 191 8. 
A Road Song; Music by Josephine McGill. Published by Anna 

Blanche McGill, Louisville, 1921. 



524 



INDEX 



525 



INDEX 

The page references for a book or poem not by Madison Cawein 
appear under the name of the writer. The books and the poems by 
Cawein are indexed in two of the subdivisions under Cawein's name. 
This index does not include Appendix B, which is a Hst of the titles 
of poems in Cawein's books. 



Adams, Maude, 297. 

Adath Israel Sisterhood, 152. 

Ade, George, 204; Cawein on, 294. 

Alberts, Bruno W., 136. 

Alberts, Gisbert B., 136, 147. 

Alberts, J. Bernhard, 3, 37, 127, 135, 

136, 171,327 383,439. 
Alden, Henry Mills, 194, 263, 458. 
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 123, 146, 170, 

178, 199, 219, 251, 254, 258-260, 331, 

334, 347, 425, 438, 511 ; letters to, 199, 

236, 237, 251, 257, 259; letter bv, 334; 

Cawein on, 257, 258, 260. 
Alethean Society, 78. 
Allen, James Lane, 101, 105, 122, 155, 

171, 258, 297, 404, 414, 438, 457. 
Allison, Young E., 119, 130, 131, 133, 

171, 186, 190, 193, 224, 239, 305, 327, 

394, 404, 426, 436, 438; Cawein on, 

186; reminiscences by, 406-412. xi. 
Allmond, Marcus, 18, 107. 
Altsheler, Brent, 416. 
Amato, Pasquale, 297. 
Ambrose, Paul, 524. 
American Academy of Arts and 

Letters, 304, 320, 326, 328. 
Ancestry; see Cawein, Madison. 
Anderson, Margaret Steele, 115, 150, 

171, 297, 383, 390, 425, 436, 465, 514; 

poem quoted, 163, 384. 
Anderson, Simrail, 151. 
Andrews, Matthew Page, 171, 522, 

523. 
Anthologies, List of, 520-523. 
Appearance, personal; see Cawein, 

Madison. 



Appreciation of praise; see Cawein, 

Madison. 
Archer, William, 171, 205, 227, 228, 

241,426,512,515, 516, 521. 
Arms, coat of; see Cawein, Madison. 
Armstrong, A. W., 519. 
Armstrong, H. P., 522. 
Arnold, Matthew, 217. 
Aspiration, Declaration of; see 

Cawein, Madison. 
Athenaeum Society, 78. 
Austin, Alfred, 293. 
Authors' Club of London, 112, 139, 

170, 293, 321, 322, 338, 3-39; letter to, 

321,322;letterby, 338, 339. 
Authors' Club of New York, 326, 330. 
Autobiographical notes; see Cawein, 

Madison. 
Babbit, Carrie May, 76. 
Babbit, George A., 24, 26, 70, 76, 171, 

398, 399, 464. 
Babbit, Harry A., 70, 76. 
Babbit, Roy E., 70, 76. 
Pabbit farm, 24-26, 75; see also 

Babbit, George A. 
Babbit's Mill, 70, 121, 398. 
BaldaufT, Lee, 151. 
Ballard, Mrs. Austin, 279, 283, 288. 
Bangert family, 165. 
Bantz, Henry, 165. 
Baptism of Cawein; see Cawein, 

Madison. 
Barber, Omar W., 119. 
Barbour, Elizabeth G., 522. 
Bardin, Mrs. Ida K., 165, 171. 
Barnes' Slate House, 70. 



527 



Index 



Barnett, Evelyn Snead, 115, 171, 348, 

349, 350, 390; Cawein on, 349, 350. 
Barren River, 278. 
Bartmess, Mrs. Emma Hanson, 171, 

524. 
Baskerville, Wm. Malone, 516. 
Bass, Emily F., 75; reminiscences hy, 

74-75. 
Beadles Half-Dime Novels, 77. 
Bear Grass Creek, 47. 
Beechmont, 405. 
Behney, John F., 166, 170, 296, 304, 

305; letter to, 310. 
Behney, Mrs. John F. ; see Cawein, 

Lilian L. 
Bellows, Henry Adams, 171, 519; es- 
timate by, 376-381. 
Benson, Arthur Christopher; 124, 171, 

295, 306, 425. 
Benson, F. R., 323. 
Bermuda, 314, 454. 
Bernard, George Grav, 316. 
Bible, The 124, 211, 299, 440. 
Bibliographical references, 511-524. 
Biographical Sketches, List of, 515- 

520. 
Birth; see Cawein, Madison. 
Bishop, Miss Hattie; see Speed, Mrs. 

J. B. 
Blackwood, Algernon, 157. 
Bleaters Club, 97. 
Blue Stocking Club, 447. 
Board, A. C. M., 148. 
Bobbs, W. C, 258. 
Bohemian Club, 417. 
Boldrick, Mrs. Samuel J., 171. 
Book of Love, The, 298, 466, 517, 522. 
Bookplate, 298. 
Books by Cawein; see Cawein, 

Madison, books by. 
Books dedicated to Cawein; see 

Cawein, Madison. 
Boston; see Massachusetts. 
Bouche, Alice, 116. 
Bourdillon, F. W., 437. 
Bowl, The, 35, 422. 
Braithwaite, Wm. S., 141, 522. 
Branch, Anna Hempstead, 259, 297; 

Cawein on, 297. 
Brandeis, Albert S., 16, 114, 117. 
Brannin, Horace C, 113. 
Bridges, Robert, 318, 425; Cawein on, 

318. 
Bronti, Emily and Charlotte, 205; 

Cawein on, 205. 
Bronze Bust; see Cawein, Madison. 
Bronson, Walter C, 520. 



Browder, J. Caldwell, 131. 
Brown, James B., 97. 
Brown, Robert W., 149, 171. 
Browne, Francis F., 521. 
Browning, Robert, 94, 99, 122, 123, 

176, 217, 237, 403, 424, 425, 428, 436, 

437, 442, 446. 
Brownsboro, 8, 24, 26, 27, 69, 75, 77, 

81, 121, 135, 137, 317, 405. 
Brvan, W. J., 314, 315, 317. 
Bryant, William Cullen, 343, 360, 

365, 437. 
Bryce, James, 263, 265, 346, 347. 
Burgess, Captain, 278. 
Burnett, Vivian, 524. 
Burns, Robert, 263, 347. 
Burns, Walter N., 77, 515; quoted, 86- 

93. 
Burroughs, John, 147, 171, 254, 274, 

426, 464; Cawein on, 274. 
Burt. Joe T., 122, 404. 
Burton, George Lee, 119, 149, 171; 

reminiscences by, 447-451. 
Burton, Richard, 171, 514. 
Bust, Bronze; see Cawein, Madison. 
Bynner, Witter, 297. 
Byron, Lord, 122, 173, 271, 328, 343, 

437. 
Cable, George W., 212. 
Calendar panels for 1912, 299, 466; 

The Dixie Calendar for 1916, 523. 
Cameo Club, 325. 
Cardwill, Mary E., 170; letter to, 191, 

195. 
Carleton, Mrs. Emma N., 171. 
Carleton, Will, 236. 
Carman, Bliss, 172, 207, 242, 254, 258, 

321, 425, 521; Cawein on, 321. 
Carothers, Robert H., 18, 79; reminis- 
cences by, 79. 
Carrico, J. Leonard, 523. 
Cartmell, T. R., 97. 
Caruso, Enrico, 297. 
Castellott, Don Jose, 252. 
Cavan, (Cawein), Marie, 314. 
Cave Hill Cemetery, 57, 146, 299, 403. 
Cawein, Mrs. Anna Maria, 165. 
Cawein, Mrs. Annie C. ,73 ; see Cawein, 

Mrs. Christiana; see Cawein, Mrs. 

William. 
Cawein, Charles Girdler, 166. 
Cawein, Dr. Charles L., 12, 13, 76, 

121, 138, 139, 140, 151, 166, 171, 189, 

225, 262, 399, 402. 
Cawein, Christiana, Mrs., 73; see 

Cawein, Mrs. William. 
Cawein, Daniel, 165. 



528 



Index 



Cawein, Daniel, 165, 166, 251. 

Cawein, Elizabeth, 165. 

Cawein, Eva, 165. 

Cawein, Fred W., 8, 13, 20, 24, 26, 27, 
30-32, 70, 165, 170, 206, 247, 307, 402, 
414, 458; letter to, 184, 185, 187-189. 

Cawein, Jacob, 165. 

Cawein, John, 71, 165, 166. 

Cawein, John D., 12, 121, 122, 140, 
166, 183, 188, 272, 399, 402, 415. 

Cawein, Mrs. Julia, (Mrs. Daniel 
Cawein), 165, 250, 251. 

Cawein, Ivilian L. (Mrs. John F. 
Behnev), 74, 76, 121, 166, 209, 229, 
296, 304, 305, 310, 402, 457. 

Cawein, Lula R., 121, 166. 

Cawein, Madison: 

Life of A 

Books by B 

Poems by C 

A 
Cawein, Madison (The Life of) : 

Academic degree, 18, 80, 194, 215, 
216. 

Ancestry, 87, 94, 98, 120, 142, 
165-166, 270. 

Appearance, personal, 77, 94, 96, 
98, 106, 107, 136, 161, 239, 412, 
413, 419, 420, 428, 433, 445, 447, 
452. 

Appreciation of praise, 184, 195, 
198, 199, 200, 203, 204, 213, 216, 
224, 248, 251, 256, 266, 283, 295, 
302, 305, 309, 313. 

Aspiration, declaration of, 180, 
183, 186, 188, 197, 199, 228. 

Autobiographical notes, 194, 215, 
250, 267, 270; Questionnaire, 
70, 72, 120-125; Posthumous 
Autobiography, 167-329. 

Baptism, 250. 

Birth, 3, 7, 69, 86, 98, 121, 138, 
142, 250, 270. 

Brochures by Cawein, 465, 466. 

Bust, Bronze, 53, 116-119, 136, 
149, 313, 314, 412. 

Chair of poetry, 454. 

Characteristics, 75, 77-81, 83, 88, 
93, 94, 98, 101, 103-106, 108, 110, 
112, 114, 123, 126, 128, 129, 131- 
133, 135, 136, 150, 173-175, 177, 
180, 187, 277, 304, 382-387, 396- 
399, 403-407, 409-412, 414, 415, 



417-424, 426-431, 433-438, 441- 
444, 446-454. 

Clubs; see Authors' Club of 
London, Athenaeum Society, 
Bohemian Club, Blue Stocking 
Club, Bleaters Club, Cliff- 
Dwellers Club, Filson Club, 
Louisville Country Club, 
Louisville Literary Club, Na- 
tional Institute of Arts and 
Letters, Pendennis Club, 
Poetry Society of America. 

Coat of arms, 87. 

Conditions, unfavorable, 80, 86, 
90, 95, 122, 143, 145, 180, 181, 
185, 196, 200, 229, 272, 282, 294, 
332, 404, 406, 415. 

Criticism, on adverse, 185, 190, 
240, 241, 282, 283, 289, 343, 411. 

Death, 3, 54, 56, 137, 138-164, 442, 
443. 

Death mask, 58. 

Dedicated to Cawein, Books: 
The Flying Islands of the 
Night (Riley), 95, 436; Sonnets 
and Lyrics (Gibson), 226; Pan 
and Aeolus (Musgrove), 314, 
393; Songs of North and South 
(Malone), 394. Poems : 95, 149, 
150, 163, 164, 311, 384, 390, 391, 
432,465. Calendar: 523. 

Discouragements, 199, 202, 204, 
205, 222, 235, 240, 256, 268, 272, 
301, 307, 309, 311, 312, 315, 322, 
323, 325, 326, 328, 329. 

Early efforts, 76, 78, 80, 82, 85, 
88, 89, 94-96, 99, 101-103, 110, 
111, 122, 125, 143, 145, 175, 176, 
178-180, 190, 194, 215, 250, 271, 
272, 280, 401. 

Encouragement for others, 184, 
187, 189, 196, 197, 199, 200, 203, 
205, 206, 215, 217-220, 226, 228, 
250, 263, 273, 274, 277, 283, 292, 

295, 308, 320, 330, 404, 409, 430, 
431, 454. 

England, in, 96, 112, 124, 139, 140, 
143, 146, 155, 158, 225, 227, 228, 
237, 238, 242, 272, 273, 283, 288, 
293, 321, 322, 334, 338, 339, 407, 
512, 513, 515, 516, 517, 518. 

Fairies, 74, 129, 156, 157, 158. 

Finances, 80, 92, 95, 99, 100, 104, 
109, 128, 148, 151, 181, 187, 188, 
197, 199, 202, 207, 217-219, 226, 
250, 255, 272, 277, 279, 292, 294, 

296, 297, 306-308, 310, 312, 317, 



529 



Index 



Cawein, Madison, (The Life of) — 
(A) — Continued. 

319, 320, 322, 325, 326, 330, 404, 

416, 434, 435, 452, 454. 
Free verse, on, 316. 
Funeral, 55, 146-147,443. 
Ghosts, 70-74, 80, 81, 129, 245, 

397, 398, 399, 412, 426. 

Girls, in his youth, 79-81, 124, 

173, 178, 197, 421. 
Grave of, 57, 151. 
Graveyards, 104, 132, 133, 397, 

398, 403. 

Health, ill, 187, 188, 195, 200, 221, 
222, 229, 233, 234, 296, 307, 315, 
428, 432, 434, 439, 452. 

Homes, 7, 9, 10, 20, 21, 31, 41, 44, 
54, 69, 70-75, 91, 93, 98, 101, 
103, 104, 111, 121, 127, 138, 139, 
243, 244, 262, 265, 270, 277, 308, 
323, 324, 330, 384, 398, 402, 415, 
450. 

Influences, 70-75, 77, 79, 85, 87, 
88-91, 98, 99, 115, 121-123, 135, 
140, 143, 176, 177, 189, 201, 215, 
225, 270, 271-273, 280, 400, 401, 
403, 417, 418, 424, 425, 427, 434, 
438, 440, 444, 445. 

Jury service, 268, 269. 

Letters by, 167-329. 

Letters to, 330-339. 

Library, 31, 45, 91, 101, 111, 446. 

Literature, on, 106-108, 112, 113, 
123, 176, 178, 182, 184, 188, 196, 
198, 211, 212, 217, 236-238, 250, 
288, 292, 301, 316, 320, 326, 340- 
353, 410. 

Love and courtship, 124, 169, 200, 
201 242 243. 

Loving Cup, 50-52, 113-115, 305, 
306. 

Marriage, 39, 40, 105, 124, 243, 
405. 

Memorial Meetings, 148, 152, 440. 

Name, Julius, 169, 170, 250, 251; 
Madison, 251. 

Nature, contact with, 8, 10, 11, 
26-28, 32-36, 38, 46, 47, 70, 72- 
75, 76, 89, 100, 101, 109, 121, 131- 
135, 142-145, 149, 152, 200, 205, 
208, 209, 210, 212, 214, 223, 229, 
231-233, 243-245, 255, 267, 269, 
270, 278, 288, 290, 291, 302, 306, 
309-311, 319, 397, 398, 400, 402- 
406, 417, 421-424, 437, 446, 453. 
See also: Barren River, Bab- 



bit Farm, The Bowl, Browns- 
boro. Cave Hill Cemetery, 
Cawein Log Bridge, Cawein's 
Rest, Cawein Trail, Cawein 
Walk, Central Park, Cherokee 
Park, Colossal Cave, Cumber- 
land Mountains, Dogwood 
Lane, Father's Farm, Grave- 
yards, Green River, Harrod's 
Creek, Harpes Hill, Iroquois 
Park, Jacob Park, Kenwood 
Hill, The Knobs, Manslick 
Road, Mammoth Cave, Muh- 
lenberg County, Ohio River, 
The Old Frog Pond, Pewee 
Valley, Rock Springs, Scow- 
den's Point, Silver Creek, Sil- 
ver Hills, Shawnee Park. See 
also Florida, Georgia, Massa- 
chusetts. 

Navy, the, 143, 272; and West 
Point Military Academy, 143. 

Portrait, by Alberts, 3, 135, 136, 
147, 327, 383. 

Prose writings, 70, 89, 100, 340- 
353, 466, 517. 

References quoted; see items 
marked Reprinted, 515-520. 

Religion, 124, 129, 180, 274, 403, 
411, 412, 441. 

Scenario-writing, 314, 406. 

Schools, 16-19, 72-74, 77-79, 82, 
83, 88, 89, 94, 96, 99, 121, 122, 
139, 142, 143, 194, 239, 271, 400. 

Son of, see Cawein, Preston H. 

Visits away from Kentucky; see 
Chicago, Cincinnati, Colorado, 
Florida, Georgia, Indiana, 
Massachusetts, Michigan, New 
Jersey, New York, Philadel- 
phia, St. Louis, Tennessee. 

Wife of; see Cawein, Mrs. 
Madison. 

Will, last, quoted, 148. 

Work, method of, 34, 91, 100, 108- 
110, 143, 145, 149, 181, 189, 202, 
217, 226, 235, 236, 273, 290, 296, 
306, 309, 398, 402, 415, 431, 437, 
442, 450, 451. 

Writers, on; see Aldrich, Ade, Al- 
lison, Barnett, Branch, Bridges, 
E. and C. Bronti, Burroughs, 
Carman, Childress, Chopin, 
Daly, Dill, Finck, Fogazzaro, 
Gallagher, Gibson, M. F. Gil- 
more, Giltner, Goethe, Mrs. 
Harrison, Higbee, Howells, 



530 



Index 



Cawein, Madison, (The Life of)— 
(A) — Continued. 

Kipling, Lacy, McGaffey, A. B. 
McGill, Mackaye, Malone, 
Markham, Meredith, Joaquin 
Miller, Mitchell, Moody, Mor- 
ris, E. A. Murphy, Musgrove, 
Neihardt, Pape, Phillips, 
Pitkins, Poe, Pound, Rice, 
Riley, Rittenhouse, E. A. Rob- 
inson, Shakespeare, Stirling, 
E. N. Taylor, Teasdale, Ten- 
nyson, Torrence, Townsend, 
Van Dyke, Wharton, Robert 
Burns Wilson. 

Youth, 8-15, 69-81, 269, 270, 271, 
398, 399, 400-402, 420, 45L 

See also: Dr. Wm. Cawein, Mrs. 
Wm. Cawein, Mrs. Madison 
Cawein, Preston H. Cawein, 
The Bible, The Newmarket, 
Spiritualism, etc. 

See also: Madison Cawein, 
Books, by; Madison Cawein, 
Poems by. 

B 

Cawein, Madison, Books by: 

Accolon of Gaul, 92, 95, 184, 248 

280, 332, 457, 458, 466, 512. 
Blooms of the Berry, 23, 52, 82, 83, 

85,91,95, 100, 103, 111, 113, 178, 

180, 194, 215, 272, 280, 304, 305, 

357, 377, 433, 457, 458, 466, 511. 
Cup of Comtis, 465, 466, 514. 
Days and Dreams, 153, 217, 228, 

420, 433, 457, 460, 512. 
Garden of Dreams, 200, 241, 260, 

333, 449, 459, 460, 512. 
Giant and the Star, The, 111, 270, 

292, 400, 449, 463, 514. 
Idyllic Monologues, 204, 241, 459, 

460,513. 
Intimations of the Beautiful, 198, 

241, 357, 410, 433, 434, 458, 460, 

512. 
Kentucky Poems, 112, 142, 153, 

155, 158, 227, 234, 235, 237, 238, 

240, 241, 242, 298, 336, 379, 460, 

461, 463, 465, 513. 
Lyrics and Idyls, 188, 190, 436, 

457, 458, 512. 
Minions of the Moon, 153, 160, 313, 

315, 319, 454, 464, 466, 514. 



Moods and Memories, 125, 201, 228, 

300, 414, 415, 433, 458, 460, 512. 
Myth and Romance, 66, 129, 153, 

207, 212, 213, 437, 459, 460, 513. 
Nature Notes and Impressions, 59, 

78, 143, 250, 256, 257, 461, 463, 

465, 466, 513. 

New Poems, 112, 288, 289, 405, 

441, 449, 450, 463, 514. 
Ode . . . Massachusetts Bay 

Colony, 462, 463, 514. 
One Day and Another, 101, 217, 

460, 513. 

Poems by Madison Cawein, 298, 
299, 300, 302, 463, 466, 514. 

Poems of Madison Cawein, in five 
volumes, 68, 157, 234, 248, 255, 
256, 261, 262, 266, 267, 273, 277, 

461, 462, 466, 513, 517. 
Poems of Nature and Love, 252, 

458, 460, 512. 

Poet and Nature and the Morning 
Road, The, 70, 76, 77, 147, 153, 
157, 158, 161, 317, 318, 325, 326, 
329, 377, 464, 465, 466, 514. 

Poet, the Fool and the Faeries, The, 
119, 246, 296, 300, 306, 307, 309, 
464, 514. 

Red Leaves and Roses, 433, 444, 

458, 460, 512. 
Republic, The, 153, 312, 315, 318, 

363, 464, 466, 514. 
Shadow Garden and Other Plays, 

108, 112, 293, 294, 295, 298, 375, 

441, 448, 463, 514. 
Shapes and Shadows, 77, 203, 204, 

241,436,459,460,512. 
Triumph of Music, 91, 179, 180, 

201, 215, 280, 331, 357, 433, 457, 

458, 466, 511. 
Undertones, 198, 435, 459, 460, 512. 
Vale of Tempe, 251, 460, 466, 513. 
Voice on the Wind, 153, 240, 336, 

460, 513. 

Weeds by the Wall, 153, 224, 227, 

241, 438, 460, 513. 
White Snake, The, 136, 261, 458, 

461, 512. 

Contemplated titles for books: 
American Selection, 234; The 
Common Earth, 300; Garden of 
Polymina, 234; A Web of 
Dreams, 300; Vacation Days, 
317; Vagabond Papers, 250. 



531 



I n d 



e X 



Cawein, Madison, Poems by [The 
following list is confined to 
Cawein's poems commented on 
or referred to in this volume; 
it does not include Appendix 
B, which is a list of all the 
titles in Cawein's books.]: 

Abandoned, 423, 464. Accolon 
of Gaul, 101, 257. After Rain, 
241, 521. "Afterword" to 
Idyllic Monologues, 204. Along 
the Stream, 521. Ambition, 
114. Among the Knobs, 189. 
Andalia, 520. Athem of Dawn, 
212, 424. Anticipation, 83. 
Apart, 524. "April," 524. 
Artist, The, 169. Ass, The,421. 
At Last, 443. At the End of 
the Road, 141, 522, 523. At the 
Lane's End, 369, 373, 374, 465. 
Attributes, 522. Aubade, 523, 
524. Aurora, 278, 281. Au- 
tumn Equinox, 523. 

Baby Mary, 198, 260, 449. Bag- 
pipe, 441. Ballad of Low-Lie- 
Down, 131, 523. Beautiful- 
Bosomed, O Night, 522. Be- 
auty and Art, 521. Before the 
Rain, 522. Bertrand De Born, 

521. Black Knight, 463. Boy 
Columbus, 241. Boy's Heart, 
131, 465. Briar Rose, 318. 
Broken Drouth, 465. Bryan's 
Station, 96, 441, 523. By Wold 
and Wood, 83. 

Cabestaing, A Tragedy in Three 
Acts, 293, 411, 463. Call of 
April, 522. Call of the Heart, 

522. CarissimaMia, 169. Car- 
men, 300, 521. Cat Bird, 465. 
Catch, 436, 521. Catkins, 465. 
Caverns, 67, 522. Chipmunk, 
219, 465. Christmas Bells (a 
card), 466. Christmas Greet- 
ing To You (a card), 466. 
Christmas Hearth (a card), 
466. Christmas Letter (a card) 
466. Christmas Rose and Leaf, 
137, 322, 466. Class Poem, 
June 1886, 79, 82, 272, 401. 
Climbing Cricket, 439, 465. 
Closed Door, 523. Colossal 
Cave; see Caverns, also Colos- 
sal Cavern. Comradery, 520. 
Conclusion, 442, 522. Con- 



secration, 465. Content, 465. 
Corncob Jones, An Oldham 
County Weather Philosopher, 
363. Covered Bridge, 463. 
Creek Road, 101, 464, 520. 
Creole Serenade, 433, 438, 442. 
Dawn, The, (a card), 466. Days 
and Dreams, 194. Days of 
Used to Be, 137, 322, 466. Dead 
Man's Run, 521. Death, 520. 
Death of Love, 226. Deserted, 
523. Despair, 442. Dionysia, 
213, 440. Dirge, 520. Dis- 
enchantment of Death, 520, 

521. Distance, 83. Dithy- 
rambics, 212. Dogtown, 279. 
Dragonflies, 109, 465. Dragon- 
Seed, 449. Dream, 236. Dream 
of Christ, 83. Dream Shape, 
241. Dream Road, 364. Dreams, 
146, 147, 443. Drouth, 219, 522. 
Dryads, 310. Dusk, 222. 

Elf there is. An, 465. Enchanted 
Ground, 465. Enchantment, 

522. 523. End of Summer, 436, 
442, 521 . End of Summer, 325. 
"Epilogue" to Minions of the 
Moon, 160. "Epilogue" to 
Shapes and Shadows, 436. "Ep- 
ilogue" to The Giant and the 
Star, 292. Evasion, 169. Even- 
ing on the Farm, 464, 521, 522, 

523. Eve of All-Saints, 522. 
Faery Morris, 216. Fall, 521, 

522. Fallen Beech, 241, 465. 
Farmstead, 241. Fathers of 
Our Fathers, 426. Fern Seed, 
337. Festival of the Aisne, 
426. Feud, The, 154, 361, 372, 
433, 436, 441, 522, 523, Flam- 
encine; see "Gipsy Maiden." 
"Flight," from Intimations of 
- the Beautiful, 142, 355, 520. 
Floridian, 438. Flower of the 
Fields, 369. Forest and Field, 
371. Forest Spring, 465. 

Forest Way, 465. Frost, 235. 
Gammer Gaffer, 279. Garden 
and Gardener, 427. Garden 
Gossip, 422, 442, 465. Garden 
of Dreams, 300. Gardens of 
Falerina, 84. Genius I-oci, 374, 
410. Ghost of Yesterdav, 523. 
Ghosts, 83, 523. "Gipsy 

Maiden" (Flamencine), 438. 
Gloramone, 257, 403. Grass- 
hopper, 165. Guilt, 309. 



532 



Index 



Cawein, Madison, (Poems by) — 
(C) — Continued. 

Had we Lived in the Days, 223- 
300. Hallowe'en, 521. Hap- 
piness, 318. Happy New Year 
(a card), 466. Harvesting, 83. 
Haunted House, 236. Heart's 
Encouragement, 521. Heat 
Lightning on 'The Ohio; see 
Summer Lightning O'er The 
Ohio. Her Portrait, 169. 

Here is the Place where Loveli- 
ness Keeps House, 522, 523. 
Hesperian, 450, 465. Hiero- 
glyphs, 445. His First Mis- 
tress, 403. Home, 522. House 
of Fear, The, 293, 375, 376, 428, 
448, 463. House of Life, 376. 
House of Night, 309. House 
of Pride, 309. Hymn to De- 
sire, 521. Hymn to Spiritual 
Desire, 522. 

I Sat with Woodland Dreams, 
465. Idyll, An, 318. Idyll of 
the Standing Stone, 300. "In 
A Shadow Garden," from The 
Shadow Garden, scene 2, 522. 
In An Old Garden, 523. In 
Arcady, 463. In Autumn, 439. 
In May, 169, 523. In Mythic 
Seas, 182. In Solitary Places, 
424, 427. In the Beech Woods, 
422. In the Lane, 439, 442, 
52L In the Shadow of the 
Beeches, 523. Indian Summer, 
252, 337, 442, 522. Intimations 
of the Beautiful, 101, 142, 338, 
355, 357, 428, 521 ; introductory 
verses, second part of "Pre- 
ludes." Iron Crags, 426. Iron 
Cross, 426. Ishmael, 433. 

It was Among These Very 
Woods, 465. 

Jessamine and the Morning- 
Glory, The, 83. Jotunheim, 

212, 213. July, 521. 
Kentucky (1885), 426; (1913), 

523. Kentucky, The Battle- 
ship, 523. Ku Klux, 101, 154, 
361, 520, 521, 522. 
Lady of Verne, 169, 257. La- 
ment, 83. Land of Illusion, 

213. Late November, 442. 
Let Us Do the Best That We 
Can, 465. Lesson, 427. Light, 
442. Light and Wind, 438. 



Lincoln, 280, 281. Little Boy 
Sleepv, 292, 450. Love and a 
Day, 438, 448, 521, 522. Love 
and Loss, 169. Love in a 
Garden, 438. Low-Lie-Down, 
131. Lyanna, 257. Lynchers, 
361. 

Magic Purse, 523. Maid who 
Died Old, 521. Man in Gray, 
522. Man Hunt, 441, 521, 523. 
March, 523. March, 337, 364. 
Mariana, 247, 251. Mariners — 
Class Poem (1886\ 82, 143. 
May, 337, 521. Meeting and 
Parting, 169, 438. Meeting in 
Summer, 521, 523. Memory, 
524. Mene, Mene, Tekel, Up- 
harsin, 426, 437, 520, 521. 
Message of the Lilies, 466. 
Midsummer, 465. Midsummer 
Day, 465. Mid-Winter, .521. 
Miracle of the Dawn, 523. 
Miracles, 440, 442. Mood o' 
the Earth, 86, 465. Moonmen, 
521. Moonshiner, 414. Morn- 
ing-Glories, 465, 523. Morning 
Road, 161. Mosby at Hamil- 
ton, 521. Mound Men, 131. 
Mountain-Still, 523. Music, 
212. Myth and Romance, 440, 
521. 

New York Skyscraper, 523. 
Niello, 433, 442. Night, 236. 
Noera, 252, 337, 436, 520. 
November, 338. 

October, 241. Ode, An, 265-268, 
273, 337, 462. Old Barn, 442, 

464. Old Dreamer, 329, 428, 
435, 523. Old Herb-Man, 252. 
Old Home, 368, 523. Old Home 
319. Old Homes, 207, 367, 465, 
521, 523. Old Man Winter, 
450. Old Remain, 311. Old 
Spring, 439, 442, 521. Old Tale 
Retold, 257. Old Water Mill, 
361, 368, 522. On Old Cape 
Ann, 462. On the Farm, 522. 
On the Road, 523. One Day 
and Another, 217, 223, 228, 360, 
420, 433. One Who Loved 
Nature, 75, 337. Opportunity, 
520. Our Dreams, 374. Over- 
seas, 521. Oversoul, 374, 442, 

465. Owlet, 465. Owl's 
Roost, 465. 

Parsifal, 99. Path to the Woods, 
465, 522, 523. Paths, 523. 



533 



Index 



Madison, Cawein, (Poems by) — 

(C) — Continued. 

Pax Vobiscum, 182. Poe, 280, 
281. Poppy and Mandragora, 
338. Portents, 426. Prae ten- 
ia, 115. Prayer for Old Age, 
114, 374, 449. Preludes, 337, 
(first part, see Proem to Myth 
and Pomance; second part, see 
introductory verses to Inti- 
mations of the Beautiful). 
Problems, 524. Processional, 
213,437-438. "Proem" to Myth 
and Pomance, 66, 101, 129, 337, 

520, 521, 522; see first part of 
"Preludes." "Prologue" to 
Kentucky Poems, 241, 465. 
Punishment of Loke, 84. Pur- 
ple Valleys, 213. 

Qui Docet Discit, 442. 

Rain, 114, 436, 465. Rain and 
Wind, 421, 521. Rain in the 
Woods, 465. Rain Crow, 101, 
154, 433, 436, 442, 465, 520, 522. 
Reasons, 169. Red-Bird, 433, 
439, 465. Reed Call for April, 
169, 438. Republic, 308. 

Requiem, 146, 147, 443. Re- 
quiescat, 521. Rest, 521. Re- 
straint, 169. Revealment, 337, 
523. Reverie, 241. "Riddles" 
(from Problems), 524. Ride, 521. 
Road Back, 318. Road Song, 
338, 421, 523, 524. Robert 
Browning, 523. Rue-Anemone, 

521. Ruined Mill, 76, 464. 
Salamander, 410. Seasons, 522. 

Service, 454. Shadow, The 
289, 374. vShadow Garden, 293, 
294, 375, 422, 427, 441, 448, 463. 
She is So Much. 449. So Many 
Ways, 299, 465. So Much To 
Do, 131. Sombre (from Lenau) 
108. Some Reckon Time by 
Stars, 523, 524. Some Summer 
Days, 300, 433. Song for Old 
Age, 436. Song in Season, 521. 
Song of the Road, 449. Soul, 
520. Sounds and Sights, 522. 
Speckled Trout, 522, 523. Spell, 
337. Spirit of Dreams, 213. 
Spring Twilight, 83. Standing 
Stone Creek, 76. Stars, 83. 
Stormy Sunset, 523. Strollers, 
449, 521. vSummer, 236, 241. 
Summer Lightning o'er the 



Ohio, 94, 99, 101, 102; see Heat 
Lightning on the Ohio. Sun- 
set Dreams, 338, 524. 
Tavern of the Bees, 465. There 
areFairies, 338, 442, 521. There 
was a Rose, 169. Thorn-Tree, 
523. "Three Kisses" 60-65. 
Threnody, 521. To a Wind- 
Flower, 101, 404, 422, 520, 521, 
523. To James Whitcomb Ril- 
ey, 246. To Let, 224. To 
Sorrow, 236, 241. To W. T. H. 
Howe, 465. Toll-Man's 

Daughter, 83, 236, 370. Too 
Late, 442. Topsy Turvy, 131. 
Tramps, 289. Transmutation, 

521. Transubstantiation, 169, 
207. Treasure Trove, 308. Tree- 
Toad. 214, 465, 522. Triumph 
ofMusic,180, 182. Troubadour, 
161. Trvst, 438. Twilight 
Moth. 216, 241, 250, 521, 522. 

Uncalled, 436. Under Arcturus, 

522. Under the Stars and 
Stripes, 520, 522, 524. Un- 
heard, 522. Unrequited, 235, 
236, 300, 370, 522. 

Voice of April, 522. Voice on 
the Wind, 369. 

Wanderer, 426. War-Time Sil- 
houettes, 521. Watcher, 434. 
Wedlock, or Our Wedlock, 96, 
110. What Little Things, 223. 
Whatever the Path, 137, 322, 
466. When I Am Dead, 128. 
When Love Delays, 520. When 
Lydia Smiles, 169. When Ships 
Put Out to Sea, 207, 524. When 
Things go Wrong, 465. Where 
the Battle Passed, 426. Where 
the Path Leads, 76, 465. Whip- 
poorwill, 152, 402, 422, 433, 442, 
520-523. Whippoorwill Time, 
464. White Evening, 83. Why 
Should I Pine? 169. Wild- 
Thorn and Lily, 300, 433, 444. 
Will You Forget.'' 169. Wind 
in the Pines, 520, 521. Winds, 
442. Witch— A Miracle, 293, 
375, 428, 463. Witchery, 465. 
Witnesses, 169. Woman or 
What? 461. Wood God, 523. 
Wood Stream, 296. Wood 
Thrush, 465. Wood Water, 
252. Wood Witch, 465. Wood- 
Words, 521. Words, 169. 

ZypsofZirl,522. 



534 



Index 



Cawein, Mrs. Madison, (Gertrude), 
42, 57, 111, 114, 127, 128, 136, 140, 
244, 247-249, 252, 253, 258. 259, 261, 
262, 265-267, 269, 274, 275-280, 283, 

288, 289, 296-298, 303, 306, 307, 310, 
312, 314, 315, 317-319, 321, 323-328, 
337, 397, 409, 445, 446, 453, 460, 462; 
Gertrude Foster McKclvey, 40, 105, 
124, 168, 169, 224, 226, 229, 242, 243, 
460. ix. 

Cawein, Madison II, 43, 166, 170, 449; 
reminiscences by, 396-400; see 
Cawein, Preston H. 

Cawein, Philip, 165. 

Cawein, Preston H., (Madison 
Cawein II) 42, 43, 109, 111, 117, 124, 
127, 140, 148, 166, 170, 248, 251, 252, 
254, 260, 262, 264, 265-270, 278, 288, 

289, 291, 294, 296, 301, 304, 307, 308, 
310-313, 315, 318, 319, 322-325, 327, 
328, 449, 463; letter to, 254; Madi- 
son Cawein II, 43, 166, 170, 449. 

Cawein, Rose, (Mrs. Wm. Osborne), 
76, 165, 402, 457. 

Cawein, Dr. William, 4, 6, 9, 57, 69, 
71-75, 87, 93, 120, 137, 142, 165, 166, 
205, 212, 214, 222, 229, 250, 270, 399, 
402, 403. 

Cawein, Mrs. William, (Mrs. Chris- 
tiana or Annie C. Cawein; Mrs. J. 
Henry Doerr.), 5, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 
75, 98, 120, 142, 165, 166, 178, 209, 
229, 250, 251, 255, 260, 262, 267, 270, 
299, 399, 402, 403, 458, 462. 

Cawein, William C, 12, 25, 70, 121, 
140, 166, 189, 399, 402. 

Cawein family, the grandparents, 
parents, uncles and aunts of Mad- 
ison Cawein, 165-166. 

Cawein Log Bridge, 152. 

Cawein Memorial Meetings; see 
Cawein, Madison. 

Cawein Trail, 149, 152, 402. 

Cawein Walk, 34, 35, 149, 152, 402. 

Cawein's Rest, 149. 

Central Park, 39, 78, 105, 173, 265, 311. 

Cervantes, 74, 123, 426. 

Chair of Poetry ; see Cawein, Madison 

Chappie, J. M., 522. 

Characteristics; see Cawein, Madi- 
son. 

Chatfield-Taylor, H. C, 326. 

Chatterton, Thomas, 294, 295, 437. 

Chautauqua, N. Y., 128. 

Cherokee Park, 47, 145, 223. 

Chicago, 302, 320. 



Childress, Rufus J., 220; Cawein on, 

220. 
Clinedinst, B. West, 255. 
Chivers, Thos. H., 269. 
Chopin, Mrs. Kate, 211, 212, 214; 

Cawein on, 212. 
Church of The Messiah, First 

Unitarian Church, 152, 443. 
Churchill, Winston, 348. 
Cliff Dwellers' Club, 139. 
Cincinnati, 226, 314, 317, 318. 
Clark, Helen A., 512. 
Clarke, Jennie T., 522. 
Clubs; see Cawein, Madison. 
Coat of Arms; see Cawein, Madison. 
Coates, Florence Earle, 171, 259, 263. 
Cobb, Irvin S., 171. 
Coburn, Mr. and Mrs. Chas. D., 

289 298 
Cole, 'Timothy, 171, 328, 427. 
Coleridge, Samuel T., 122, 271, 360, 

400. 
College degree; see Cawein, Madison, 

academic degree. 
Colonel Carr House, 81. 
Colorado, 105, 243-245. 
Colossal Cavern, 206, 278. 
Combs, Josiah H., 171, 523. 
Conditions, unfavorable; see Cawein, 

Madison. 
Converse, Frederick S., 524. 
Conwav, Moncure D., 259. 
Cornet't, Earl, 131. 
Cornett, Mrs. Edith Taylor, 131, 132. 
Cornett, Peter, 132. 
Cottell, Henry A., 107, 114, 119, 138, 

139, 147, 149, 150, 151, 170, 224, 226, 

239, 243, 245, 247, 248, 260, 261, 265, 

269, 277, 281, 282, 301, 305, 310, 390, 

391, 395, 428, 446, 460, 462; letter to, 

244, 252, 297; poem quoted, 386, 

390, 391, 432; reminiscences by, 432- 

444. 
Cottell, James R., 151. 
Country Club, Louisville, 139, 140, 

289. 
Courtship and love; see Cawein, 

Madison. 
Cowley, Abraham, 355. 
Craddock, C. E., 212. 
Craik, C. E., 114, 146, 147, 443. 
Crashaw, Richard, 364. 
Crestwood Station, 171. 
Criticism, Cawein on adverse ; see 

Cawein, Madison. 
Crockett, Ingram, 119, 171, 390, 395, 

404. 



535 



Index 



Cumberland Mountains, 135, 140, 142, 

357, 414. 
Cup presented to Cawein, Loving; 

see Cawein, Madison. 
Cusick, James Lee, 49. 
Daly, T. A., 321 ; Cawein on, 321. 
Danforth, Josephine L., [error reads 

Florence Danforth] 116. 
D'Annunzio, Gabriel, 351. 
Dante, 182, 203. 

Daubert, Charles L., 166, 250, 251. 
Davidson, John, 425. 
Davies, Wm. H., 301. 
Davis, Wm. J., 18. 
Dean, Harry M., 130. 
Dearing's Book Store, 410. 
Death Mask of Cawein; see Cawein, 

Madison. 
Death of Cawein ;see Cawein, Madison 
Dedicated to Cawein : Books, Poems ; 

see Cawein, Madison. 
Dell, Floyd, 316; Cawein on, 316. 
De Menil, Alexander N., 215, 216, 329. 
De Morgan, Wm., 348. 
Deppen, Anna Chase, 385, 388. 
Dick, Mrs. Belle T., 521. 
Dickens, Charles, 123. 
Dickey, Mrs. Fannie Porter, 520. 
Discouragements; see Cawein, Mad- 
ison. 
Ditto, Mrs. Lillian Sweet; see Sweet, 

Lillian. 
Dobbs, Mrs. Katherine Whipple, 171. 
Dobson, Austin, 176. 
Dodd, Wm. J., 115. 
Dodsley's Old Plays, 352. 
Doerr, J. Henry, 14, 15, 42, 43, 166, 

229, 255, 260. 
Doerr, Mrs. J. Henry, 296; see Cawein, 

Mrs. William. 
Dogwood Lane, 423. 
Dole, Nathan Haskell, 520. 
Donne, John, 364. 
Drewry, George J., 17, 77, 78. 
Dryden, John, 88, 365. 
Duncan, Ellis, 151. 
Duncan, John, 385. 
Duncan-Clark, S. J., 315, 514. 
Du Relle, George, 115, 147, 150. 
Earle, Ferdinand, 522. 
Early efforts; see Cawein, Madison. 
Eaton, H. W., 18. 
Eaton, T. T., 16. 
Eddy, J. Marvin, 148, 171, 324. 
Edgar, Wm. C, 523. 
Egan, Maurice Francis, 171. 
Eitel, Edmund H., 171. 



Ellwanger, George H., 172, 206, 461. 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 207, 343, 365, 

425, 437. 
Encouragement for others; see 

Cawein, Madison. 
Encyclopedias, List of, 524. 
Enelow, H. G., 114. 
England, In; see Cawein, Madison. 
Escott, James S., 33, 47. 
Estell, R., 105, 243. 
Estimates and reviews of Cawein's 

works. List of 511-520. . 
Estimates of Cawein's poetry: by 

Gosse, 354-358; by Howells, 358-361 ; 

by Peckham, 362-366; by McGill, 

366-376; by Bellows, 376-381. 
Fairies; see Cawein, Madison. 
Fairleigh, David W., 454. 
Father's Farm, 30, 205, 212, 214, 403. 
Fawcett, Edgar, 342. 
Felsinger, Mrs. Sara Teasdale; see 

Teasdale, Sara. 
Ferris, Mrs. M. P., 170; letter to, 238. 
Fetter, George G., 413, 414, 416. 
Fidelity and Casualty Co., 151. 
Field, Eugene, 205, 236, 237. 
Field, Wm. H., 119, 171, 390, 393. 
Fielding, Henry, 123. 
Filson Club, 23, 96, 127, 139, 140, 282, 

383, 434. ix, xi. 
Finances; see Cawein, Madison. 
Finck, Bert, 97, 119, 149, 170, 221, 226, 

404, 428, 436, 520; letter to, 327; 

Cawein on, 221, 227; on Cawein 

and some of his Kentucky friends, 

382-395. 
Fiske, John, 265. 
Fiske, Mrs. Lida Waters, 171. 
Flaubert, Gustave, 403. 
Flexner, Hortense (Mrs. Wyncie 

King), 172, 425, 517; quoted, 107- 

113. 
Florida, 195, 208-210. 
Fogazzaro, Antonio, 343, 344; Cawein 

on, 344. 
Foote, Ulysses G., 119, 149. 
Forcht, Fred, 151. 
Fox, John, Jr., 101, 122, 135, 168, 170,. 

194, 293, 404, 414; letter to, 181, 183, 

184, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 192, 197. 
Frayser, Nannie Lee, 150; quoted, 150.. 
Free Verse, Cawein on; see Cawein» 

Madison. 
Freeman, J. K., 151. 
Freyhoefer, Josephine, 166. 
Frog Pond, The Old, 33. 
Fulton, Maurice G., 523. 



536 



Index 



Funeral; see Cawein, Madison. 
Gable, Wm. F., 239, 246, 330, 331. 
Gallagher, Wm. D., 292; Cawein on, 

292. 
Galliene, Richard le, 172, 254. 
Gait House, 69, 258. 
Garden, Mary, 314. 
Gardner, Chas. C, 114. 150. 
Garland, Hamlin, 171, 254. 
Gautier, Theophile, 403. 
Geibel, Emmanuel, 437, 459, 
Geiger, R. W., 233, 234. 
Georgetown Road, 121. 
Georgia, (Lithia Springs), 229-234. 
Geppert, Mrs. Hester Higbee; see 

Higbee, Hester. 
Gertrude; see McKelvey, Gertrude 

Foster; Cawein, Mrs. Madison. 
Ghosts; see Cawein, Madison. 
Gibbon, Edward, 124, 426. 
Gibson, Mary Elaine Cawein, 198, 

225, 247, 260, 329. 
Gibson, R. E. Lee, 105, 115, 149, 167, 

168, 170, 196, 200, 214, 243, 247, 304, 

305, 404, 425, 437, 438, 459, 516; 

letters to, 196-329; Cawein on, 196, 

281, 282. 
Gibson, Mrs. R. E. Lee, 258. 
Gibson, Wm. Hamilton, 276. 
Gilder, Richard Watson, 123, 194, 254, 

259, 276, 293, 321, 425, 438. 
Gilmore, Marion Forster, 150, 171, 

295, 436; Cawein on, 295. 
Gilmore, Thos. M., 149, 295. 
Giltner, Leigh Gordon, 170, 226, 390, 

395, 404, 515, 517; letter to, 218; 

Cawein on, 218, 227; reminiscences 

by, 429-432. 
Giovannitti, A. M., 316. 
Girdler, Katherine, 117. 
Girls in his youth; see Cawein, Mad- 
ison. 
Gleason, J. Miles, 17, 77. 
Goethe, 352, 437, 453, 459; Cawein on, 

352. 
Goldsmith, Oliver, 88, 122, 271. 
Gooch, H. A., 18. 
Goodloe, Abbie Carter, 171, 212. 
Goss, Charles Frederic, 226. 
Gosse, Edmund, 105, 124, 139, 146, 

155, 168, 171, 176, 199, 225, 227, 229, 

234-238, 240, 241, 272, 283, 306, 336, 

347, 370, 379, 405, 407, 426, 438, 440, 

460, 461, 516; letter by, 333, 334; 

estimate by, 354-358. 
Gould, George M., 517. 



Gould, Mrs. Laura Stedman; see 

Stedman, Laura. 
Grant, H. H., 151. 
Grant, John Peter, 116, 147, 171, 448, 

449. 
Graves, Allison, 97. 
Graves, F. S., 151. 
Graveyards; see Cawein, Madison. 
Green, Hewett, 385, 387. 
Green, Norvin, 152. 
Green River, 278, 356. 
Greenslet, Ferris, 281. 
Greenville High School, 130, 131. 
Greve, Charles T., 171, 226. 
Griffith, Emma, 253. 
Griffiths, Edith H., 171. 
Guiney, Louise Imogen, 171, 237, 425. 
Guthrie, Wm. Norman, 515. 
Hale, Ralph T., Ill, 171. 
Hale's Longer English Poems, 79, 88, 

122, 400, 401. 
Hall, Gertrude, 259, 297. 
Halleck, Reuben Post, 18, 78, 79, 115, 

122, 147, 149, 150, 152, 271, 436, 517, 

522; reminiscences by, 400-402. 
Hammond, John Hays, 267, 290. 
Hardy, Thomas, 123, 426. 
Hare, Maud Cuney, 523. 
Harpes Hill, 133, 134, 135. 
Harriman, Mrs. Edward H., 268. 
Harris, C. H., 151. 
Harris, Credo, 171. 
Harris, Evelyn, 233, 234. 
Harris, Joel C, 234, 438. 
Harris, Mrs. Theodore, 171. 
Harris, Victor, 254. 
Harrison, Mrs. M. St. L., 344; Cawein 

on, 344, 345. 
Harrod's Creek, 99, 453; see also 

South P^ork of Harrod's Creek. 
Harvey, George, 304. 
Haunts, favorite, near Louisville; see 

Cawein, Madison — contact with 

nature. 
Hauptman, Gerhart, 351. 
Hawes, T. M., 119. 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 328. 
Hav, John, 155. 
Hayes, John Russell, 170, 242, 513, 

516; letter to, 241. 
Hayne, P. H., 425. 
Hays, Will S., 103, 119, 171, 385, 386, 

392. 
Head, W. O., 117. 
Health, 111; see Cawein, Madison. 
Hebden, James B., 17, 77; remin- 
iscences by, 77-79. 



537 



Index 



Hedden, Elsie, 115. 

Heine, Heinrich, 143, 272, 453, 459, 

517. 
Hemphill, C.R., 149. 

Hensel, Octavia, 385, 387, 388. 

Henton, Sarah, 515. 

Herancour, Jean de, 6, 87, 120, 267, 
270. 

Herancour family, 165. 

Herbert, George, 364. 

Hesse, Henry, 7, 11, 21, 22, 23, 28, 34, 
35, 41, 44, 54, 55, 57. 

Higbee, Hester, (Mrs. Wm. Geppert), 
171, 187; Cawein on, 187. 

Higgin.son, T. W., 254. 

Hill, Mildred J., 427, 450, 524. 

Hite, A. H., 17,77. 

Hoeppner, Herman, 17, 77. 

Holliday, Carl, 516, 521. 

Hollis, Louise, 147. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 79, 123, 207. 

Homer, 176. 

Homes of Cawein; see Cawein, Mad- 
ison. 

Hood, Thomas, 446. 

Hooker, Brian, 514. 

Hopkins, E. S., 119. 

Hopper, Anna Logan, 171, 436; poem 
quoted, 387. 

Horace, 88, 178, 425. 

Housman, Lawrence, 425. 

Hovey, Richard, 237. 

Howard, John R., 522. 

Howe, W. T. H., 147, 171, 317, 318, 465. 

Howells, Mildred, 95, 100, 103. 

Howells, Wm. Dean, 85, 91, 95, 100,104, 
111, 115, 123, 140, 146, 160, 185, 190, 
194, 195, 212, 215, 226, 237, 238, 240, 
248, 258, 259, 272, 273, 304, 305, 328, 
332, 340, 367, 404, 407, 426, 438, 457, 
458, 461, 463, 511, 512, 513, 515, 517; 
quoted, 94, 98, 170; letter to, 179, 
190, 191; letter by, 331, 336; Cawein 
on, 191, 212, 213, 304; estimate by, 
358-361. X. 

Hulme, Wm. Henry, 516. 

Humperdinck, Engelbert, 297. 

Humphries, Wm., 414, 416. 

Hutchinson, Ellen M., 520. 

Illustrations, List of, 1, 2. 

Index to poems in Cawein's books, 
467-550. 

Indiana: Bloomington, 264; Ind- 
ianapolis, 123, 199, 249, 264, 299, 
437; Lafayette, 325; see also New 
Albany, and The Knobs. 



Influences; see Cawein, Madison. 
Iroquois Park, 11, 34, 35, 38, 72, 128, 

149, 152, 402, 405, 406, 408, 422, 423. 

(Same as Jacob Park.) 
Irwin, W. F., 115. 
Irwin, Wallace, 254. 
Jackson Street School, New Albany, 

121. 
Jacob Park, 35, 128, 397. (Same as 

Iroquois Park.) 
Jarvis, R. M., 16, 17. 
JefTersontown, 104, 403, 405. 
Jeffries, Richard, 206, 426. 
Johnson, E. Polk, 518. 
Johnson, Gertrude E., 523. 
Johnson, Robert Underwood, 123, 171, 

254, 259, 321, 328. 
Johnson, Rossiter, 326. 
Johnston, J. Stoddard, 515. 
Jonas, Edward A., 113, 115, 119, 172; 

quoted, 139. 
Jones, Thos. S., Jr., 170, 263; letter to, 

263. 
Keats, John, 78, 88, 89, 94, 99, 122, 

123, 143, 158, 177, 182, 242, 266, 271, 

328, 357, 359, 364, 365, 371, 379, 401, 

403, 419, 424, 425, 437, 440, 446. 
Kelly, A. Harris, 97, 394. 
Kennedy, Mr. and Mrs. Charles 

Rann, 290, 291, 298. 
Kent, C. W., 517, 522. 
Kentucky River, 205. 
Kenwood Hill, 11, 33, 72, 109, 397, 

402. 
Kenyon, James B., 172. 
Kidd, John, 314. 
Kilmer, Joyce, 172, 520. 
King, Wyncie, 50, 56. 
King, Mrs. Wyncie; see Flexner, 

Hortense. 
Kipling, Rudyard, 190, 211, 212, 237, 

268, 351, 426; Cawein on, 190, 192, 

211. 
Knobs, The, 10, 11, 28, 46, 70-74, 78, 

81, 90, 99, 100, 104, 121, 140, 142, 143, 

145, 183, 186, 189, 239, 270, 272, 398, 

405, 417, 421, 422. 
Knott, Richard W., 147, 149, 170; 

quoted, 144-145. 
Knott, Mrs. Richard W., letter to, 

251, 256. 
Koehler, F. W., 453. 
Koehler, Henry H., 172; reminis- 
cences by, 451-454. 
Kohlepp, John, 166. 
Koontz, Fred L., 115. 



538 



Index 



Lacy, Ernest, 294; Cawein on, 294- 

295. 
La Farge, John, 293. 
Landor, Walter Savage, 182. 
Landrum, W. W., 150, 440. 
Lang, Andrew, 124, 172, 176, 252, 

272-273. 
Lanier, Sidney, 327, 425. 
Latimer, E. McKee, 17. 
Leber, F. C, 17, 18. 
Lee, Harry S., 97. 
Lehmann, Charles A., 115. 
Lemont, Jessie, 172, 297. 
Lenau, Nicholas, 105, 108, 113, 437, 

453, 517; Cawein on, 113. 
Letters by Cawein, and letters to 

Cawein; see Cawein, Madison. 
Library, Cawein's; see Cawein, Mad- 
ison. 
Liddell, Mark H., 172, 517. 
Lincoln, Abraham, 280, 281, 317. 
Lindsay, Nicholas Vachel, 172. 
Lippold, Ben, 416, 417. 
Literature, Cawein on; see Cawein, 

Madison. 
Lithia Springs; see Georgia. 
Litsey, Edwin Carlisle, 172, 390, 395. 
Lodge, H. C, 265. 
Longest, Amy M., 130, 172. 
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 176, 

207, 237, 258, 328, 351, 380, 437. 
Louisville City Directory, 69, 72. 
Louisville Conversation Club, 433. 
Louisville Country Club, 139, 140, 

289. 
Louisville Free Public Library, 51, 

53, 55, 113, 116, 117, 118, 119, 136, 

148, 149, 152, 313. xi. 
Louisville Girls' High School, 152; 

Louisville Female High School, 78. 
Louisville Literary Club, 52, 105, 113, 

119, 127, 139, 140, 148, 149, 152, 304, 

305, 434, 440. 
Louisville Literature Club, 53, 116, 

117-118, 149, 313. 
Louisville Male High School, 16-19, 

77, 79, 82, 88, 94, 96, 99, 115, 121, 139, 

142, 152, 173, 215, 216, 271, 400, 401. 
Louisville Press, Cawein's life as 

recorded by, 82-119. 
Louisville Trust Co., 148. 
Louisville Woman's Club, 118, 292, 

321, 445. 
Love and courtships; see Cawein, 

Madison. 
Lovell, Eugene, 133. 
Loving Cup; see Cawein, Madison. 



Lowe, George S., 97. 

Lowell, James Russell, 123, 194, 207, 

277, 322, 346. 
Lowell, Orson, 255. 
Lukins, H. N., 151. 
Lyric Club of the Louisville Girls' 

High School, 152. 
Lytton, Bulwer, 123. 
McConathy, Sara, 115. 
McDermott, Ed. J., 106, 114, 147, 152, 

172. 
McGaffey, Ernest, 112, 239, 513; 

Cawein on, 239. 
McGill, Anna Blanche, 150, 170, 226, 

253, 257, 269, 390, 391, 404, 436, 513, 

516, 517, 519; letter to, 242, 277, 281 ; 

quoted, 392; Cawein on, 281; re- 
miniscences by, 419-429; estimate 

by, 366-376. xi. 
McGill, Josephine, 115, 172, 253, 269, 

277, 421, 427, 524. 
McKee, Samuel, Jr., 16, 17, 77, 78, 

172. 
McKelvey, Mrs. Anna M., (Mrs. 

John F. McKelvey), 140, 172, 254, 

289, 397. 
McKelvey, Gertrude Foster; see 

Cawein, Mrs. Madison. 
McKelvey, Mrs. Jane Sproule, 139. 
McKelvey, John F., 139, 243. 
McKnight, Stuart, 453. 
Mabie, Hamilton W., 200, 517. 
Macaulay, Thos. Babington, 124, 426. 
Macfarland, A. E., 433. 
Macfarlane, Graham, 453. 
Mackave, Percy, 123, 275, 276, 290, 

297, 351 ; Cawein on, 276, 351. 
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 123, 154, 297, 

375. 
Mahoney, Carrie S., 220. 
Malet, Lucas, 343. 
Malone, Walter, 170, 275, 314, 393, 

404, 425; letter to, 196, 197, 291, 312; 

Cawein on, 291, 292, 310, 311. 
Mammoth Cave, 206, 278. 
Manly, Louise, 520. 
Manslick Road, 423. 
Marcosson, Isaac F., 172, 513, 520. 
Marden, Orison S., 254. 
Markham, Edwin, 172, 254, 258, 259, 

275, 297, 328, 351, 371, 438; Cawein 

on, 259. 
Marlowe, Christopher, 310. 
Marlowe, Julia, 295. 
Marriage; see Cawein, Madison. 
Marshal-Loepke, G., 524. 
Marshall, Carl C, 220. 



539 



Index 



Massachusetts, 95, 123, 267, 278, 290, 
291, 302, 397, 437; Boston, 104, 123, 
191, 194, 252, 254, 260, 291, 302. 
Masters, Edgar Lee, 172. 
Matthews, J. Brander, 293, 326, 362. 
Matthews, Walter, 417. 
Maupassant, Guy, de, 403. 
May, Virginia, 172. 
Memorial Meetings, Cawein; see 

Cawein, Madison. 
Meredith, George, 123, 172, 293, 345, 

425, 426; Cawein on, 345. 
Merker, Margaret, 149. 
Metcalf, John Calvin, 519. 
Method of work; see Cawein, Madi- 
son. 
Meynell, Mrs. Alice, 172, 427. 
Meynell, Rverad, 518. 
Michigan, 302. 

Miller, Elvira Sydnor, (Mrs. Elvira S. 
M. Slaughter), 170, 186, 187, 390, 
392, 436, 515, 516; letter to, 175, 178, 
181, 194; letter by, 331; quoted, 
102-105; reminiscences by, 402-406. 
Miller, Howard, 119. 
Miller, Joaquin, 123, 158, 172, 247, 
263, 346, 347, 418, 438, 458, 515; 
Cawein on, 346. 
Miller, Shackelford, 152. 
Milton, John, 88, 99, 203, 343, 364, 

437, 441, 442. 
Mims, Edwin, 517, 521. 
Minett, Kate, 253. 
Mirza-ShafTy, 459. 

Mitchell, Weir S., 253; Cawein on, 253. 
Moeller, Hugo R. M., 18. 
Monro, Harold, 518. 
Monroe, Harriet, 170, 518; letters to, 

316. 
Moody, W'm. Vaughan, 123, 172, 242, 
254, 258, 259, 263, 348, 425; Cawein 
on, 242. 
Morgan, J. Pierpont, 328. 
Morris, Harrison S., 117, 170, 2.35, 
252-253, 275, 320, 321, 436, 459; 
letter to, 198, 199, 203, 206, 295; 
Cawein on, 203, 206, 235, 252, 275. x. 
Morton, David, 119, 172, 425, 436. 
Morton, J. P. & Co., 23, 100, 126, 226, 
260, 282, 414, 415, 433, 457, 458, 459, 
460, 462, 464, 466. 
Moses, Montrose J., 517. 
Moulton, Mrs. Louise, 200, 273. 
Muhlenberg County, 127, 129-135, 327, 

394. 
Mullins, E. Y., 115, 149, 518. 
Murch, E.M.,18. 



Murphy, Ethel Allen, 116, 149, 152, 170, 

436; letter to, 279; Cawein on, 279. 
Musset, Alfred, de, 403. 
Musgrove, Charles H., 115, 119, 170, 

207, 314, 390, 393, 394, 436, 512; 

quoted, 143-144; letter to, 314; 

Cawein on, 207, 315; reminiscences 

by, 413-419. 
National Arts Club, 258. 
National Institute of Arts and Let- 
ters, 112, 139, 140, 149, 157, 159, 275, 

276, 303, 304, 320, 326, 328. 
Nature, contact with; see Cawein, 

Madison. 
Neale, Walter, 522. 
Neihardt, J. G., 316; Cawein on, 316. 
Nesbit, Wilbur D., 117. 
New Albany, Indiana, 10, 28, 36, 72, 

77, 121, 142, 215, 239, 270, 271, 398, 

399, 405, 417. 
New Jersey, (Princeton), 274, 436. 
New York, 123, 159, 161, 191, 195, 252, 

254, 258, 259, 274, 275, 297, 302, 303, 

324, 328, 437. 
Newmarket, The, 22, 80, 81, 90, 94, 

95, 122, 143, 178, 180, 181, 183, 272, 

282, 312, 404, 415, 451, 452. 

Newspapers and Magazines: 

Academy [and Literature], London, 

238, 513, 516. 
American Author, New York, 238. 
American Review of Reviews, 514. 
Arena, 515. 
Athenaeum, London, 96, 513, 519; 

quoted, 158. 
Atlanta Constitution, 220. 
Atlantic Monthly, 99, 207, 214, 215, 

281, 316, 511, 512. 
Author, Boston, 515. 
Bellman, 391, 428, 514, 519; quoted, 

376-381. 
Bibelot, 206. 
Book Lover, 242, 516. 
Book News, Monthly, 45, 514. 
Bookman, New York, 308, 514. 
Bookseller, London, 517. 
Boston Transcript, 380, 511, 514, 

519; quoted, 155-158. 
Catholic World, 520. 
Century Magazine, 99, 186, 195, 197, 

201, 212, 253, 254, 276, 308, 334. 
Chaperon, 205. 
Chicago Post, 316. 
Collier's Weekly, 519; quoted, 160. 
Conservative Review, 516. 
Cosmopolitan Magazine, 219. 



540 



Index 



Newspapers and Magazines — 

Continued. 

Critic, 512, 513, 515. 
Current, Chicago, 89, 466. 
Current Opinion, 519, quoted, 163. 
Dial, 117, 258, 512, 513, 519; quoted, 

159, 160. 
English Review, London, 321, 322. 
English Society of Psychic Re- 
search, 427. 
Forum, 296, 312. 
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, 

515. 
Girl, Louisville, 414, 416. 
Harper's Monthly Magazine, 85, 

91, 95, 99, 100, 111, 179, 190, 207, 

215, 219, 226, 272, 274, 340, 511, 

512. 
Harper's Weekly, 207, 308. 
Hesperian, St. Louis, 215, 216, 220, 

516. 
Humanity, St. Louis, 517. 
Independent, 512, 516. 
Indianapolis News, 191. 
Journal of Education, Boston, 520. 
Judge, 224, 343. 
Kentucky Magazine, 520; quoted, 

382-395. 
Kentucky Post, Covington, 347. 
Ladies Home Journal, 252, 517. 
Lexington Herald, 519. 
Life, 343. 
Lippincott's Magazine, 96, 99, 110, 

252. 
Lippold's Illustrated News, 416. 
Literary Digest, 514. 
Literary World, Boston, 512. 
Literary World, London, 512. 
Literature, New York, 513, 515. 
London Times, 96. 
Louisville Commercial, 515; quoted, 

82-85, 86-93. 
Louisville Courier- Journal, 86, 94, 

95, 99, 103, 178, 349, 421, 511-519; 

quoted, 82, 85, 86, 93-96, 98-101, 

102, 105, 105-107, 118, 119, 139-143, 

145, 146, 148-150, 152, 340-343. 

Louisville Evening Post, 251, 256, 

297, 513, 514, 517, 518, 519; quoted, 

144, 145, 151, 163. 
Louisville Evening Times, 263, 347, 

393, 404, 513, 515, 516, 517, 518; 
quoted, 97, 98, 102-105, 113-115, 
138, 143, 144, 346-348, 348-350. 



Louisville Herald, 314, 315, 514, 517, 
518; quoted, 107-113, 115-119, 139, 
146, 147. 

Louisville Sunday Star, 416, 512. 

McClure's Magazine, 213, 276. 

Macmillan's Magazine, 190. 

Methodist Review, New York, 519. 

Midland Monthly, Des Moines, 515. 

Midland Review, Louisville, 386. 

Mirror, Reedy's, 513, 514. 

Mississippi Valley Historical Re- 
view, 167. 

Munsey's Magazine, 222. 

Nation, 512, 519; quoted, 153-155. 

New Orleans Times-Democrat, 227. 

New York Mail and Express, 436. 

New York Sun, 240, 326; quoted, 164. 

New York Times, 257, 281, 294, 325, 
331, 334, 511, 513, 514, 516, 517, 
518, 519; quoted, 153, 343-346, 350. 

New York Tribune, 238, 241. 

North American Review, 98, 212, 273, 
308, 322, 323, 513, 515, 516, 517; 
quoted, 358-361. 

Outlook, 112, 254, 296, 512, 513, 516, 
517. 

Pall Mall Gazette, 512. 

Pall Mall Magazine, 205, 512, 515. 

Pearson's, 276. 

Philadelphia Public Ledger, 241, 
513, 516. 

Poet Lore, 512, 513, 516. 

Poetry — A Magazine of Verse, 167, 
316, 519; quoted, 160-161. 

Poetry Review, London, 308, 518. x. 

Poetry Society of America Bulletin, 
167, 519; quoted, 158-159. 

Proceedings of the National In- 
stitute of Arts and Letters, 157. 

Puck, 343. 

Reader, Monthly Magazine, 242, 
251, 513. 

Review and Expositor, 518. 

St. Louis Post Dispatch, 217. 

Saturday Evening Post, 99, 222. 

Scribner's Magazine, 294, 311, 322. 

Sewanee Review, 515, 519; quoted, 
366-376. 

Smart Set, 99, 247, 275. 

South Atlantic Quarterly, 257, 516, 

519, 520; quoted, 362-366. 
Southern Magazine, 416; Fetter's 
Southern Magazine, 413-416, 466, 
515. 
Speaker, London, 96, 512. 
Spectator, London, 96. 
Success, 254. 



541 



Index 



Newspapers and Magazines — 
Continued. 

Texas Review, 519. 

Thrush, London, 112, 514; quoted, 
112. 

Truth, 207. 

Writer's Bulletin, 519; quoted, 161, 
162, 350-353. 

Youth's Companion, 75, 308, 322. 
"Nibelungen Lied," 273. 
Nicholson, Meredith, 172, 292, 316. 
Noguchi, Yone, 255. 
Noyes, Alfred, 172, 306, 312, 318, 325. 
Gates, Bayles E. and James W., 133, 

135. 
O'Brien, Edward J., 172, 379, 380; 

quoted, 155-158. 
Oglethorpe University, 327. 
Ohio River, 46, 72, 74, 77, 143, 145, 

272, 356, 405, 406. 
Oldham County, 121, 142, 270, 398. 
O'Malley, Charles J., 105, 119, 222, 

385, 386, 387, 404. 
Osborne, Mrs. William; see Cawein, 

Rose. 
O'Sheel, Shaemas, 518. 
O'Sullivan, Dan E-, 115. 
Ovid, 143, 272. 
Page, Thomas Nelson, 101, 172, 315, 

316. 
Paget, R. L., 520. 
Pain, Barry, 424. 
Palmer, E. R., 433. 
Pannell, James, 131. 
Rape, Eric, 170, 255, 262, 265-267, 275, 

276, 278, 279, 288, 289, 290, 291, 293, 

302, 316, 331, 337, 397, 427, 437, 438, 
439, 461, 463; letter to, 248, 265, 268, 
273, 275, 288, 289, 290, 292, 293, 302, 

303, 306, 313, 320, 324; Cawein on, 
276, 320. 

Pape, Mrs. Eric, (Alice Monroe 

Pape), 268, 289, 323, 464. 
Rape, Moritz, 267, 288, 289, 291, 397. 
Raton, Jessie, 522. 
Pattee, Fred Lewis, 519, 523. 
Patterson, John L., 170, 515, 147; 

letter to, 279. 
Payne, Bruce R., 521. 
Payne, Leonidas Warren, Jr., 518, 520, 

522. 
Payne, Wm. Morton, 117, 258, 512, 

513. 
Peabody, Josephine Preston, 254, 298. 
Peake, Harvey, 170; letter to, 298. 



Peckham, H. Houston, 172, 519, 520; 

estimate by, 362-366. 
Pendennis Club, 109, 139, 140, 243, 

261, 294, 297, 350, 434, 435, 454. 
Percy's Reliques, 211. 
Perry, Bliss, 214. 
Personal appearance; see Cawein, 

Madison. 
Pewee Valley, 98, 121. 
Philadelphia, 252, 253, 296, 303, 436. 
Phillips, Steven, 106, 123, 203, 237, 

242, 351, 352, 425; Cawein on, 203, 

352 
Piatt, John J., 98, 155, 226, 361, 521. 
Piatt, Mrs. S. M. B., 361. 
Picturography, 1-68. 
Pitkins, Helen, 227; Cawein on, 227. 
Plaschke, Paul A., 36, 51. 
Poe, Edgar Allen, 121, 281, 328, 343, 

350,410, 424, 425, 437, 442; Cawein 

on, 280, 350. 
Poems by Cawein; see Cawein, Madi- 
son, poems by. 
Poems dedicated to Cawein; see 

Cawein, Madison. 
Poetry Society of America, 139, 140, 

158, 159, 303, 304, 329. 
"Pomona," by Riley, 264. 
Portland (in Louisville), 80, 81. 
Portrait of Cawein; see Cawein, 

Madison. 
Pound, Ezra, 316, 364; Cawein on, 

316. 
Powell, E. L., 117; quoted, 117. 
Praise, appreciation of; see Cawein, 

Madison. 
Prentice, George D., 102, 103. 
Prescott,Wm.H.,426. 
Prose writings; see Cawein, Madison. 
Puccini, Giacomo, ("Girl of the 

Golden West"), 297. 
Questionnaire, Cawein's, 70, 72, 120- 

125. 
Ramsey, Wm. H., 277. 
Ranck, Edwin Carty, 517. 
Rankin, T. E., 520. 
Rave, Herman, 119, 150, 172. 
Reedy, William Marion, 514. 
Reese, Lizette W., 172, 425. 
References, bibliographical, 511-524. 
Reid, Jessie, 298, 466, 522. 
Religion, Cawein on; see Cawein, 

Madison. 
Reminiscences of Cawein: Madison 

Cawein II, 396-400; Halleck, 400- 

402; Slaughter, 402-406; Allison, 

406-412; Musgrove, 413-419; McGill, 



542 



Index 



Reminiscences of Cawein 

— Continued. 

419-429; Giltner, 429-432; Cotteli, 
432-444; Van Dyke, 444-446; Bur- 
ton, 447-451; Koehler, 451-454; 
Charles G. Roth, 70-71, 75-77; 
Emily F. Bass, 74-75; James B. 
Hebden, 77-79; R. H. Carothers, 79. 

Reviews and estimates of Cawein's 
works, List of, 511-520. 

Rice, Cale Young, 105, 115, 119, 147, 
170, 214, 226, 258, 390, 404, 436, 438; 
letter to, 323; Cawein on, 323. 

Rice, Mr. and Mrs. C. Y., 265, 323. 

Rice, Mrs. Felix, 130. 

Rice, Wallace and Frances, 522. 

Richards, Grant, 235, 283. 

Richards, Mrs. Waldo, 523. 

Rickert, Edith, 522. 

Ridpath, John Clark, 124, 515. 

Riley, James Whitcomb, 95, 98, 105, 
115, 117, 122, 123, 155, 168, 170, 185, 
190, 193, 197, 199, 218, 219, 224, 225, 
236, 237, 246, 258, 261, 263-266, 272, 
292, 299, 303, 304. 309, 321, 322, 331, 
335, 336, 346, 347, 351, 361, 363, 376- 
380, 404, 408, 409, 425, 436-438, 442, 
446, 457, 462; letter to, 201, 207, 212, 
233, 234, 239, 243, 245, 247, 249, 251, 
257, 264, 266, 267, 269, 303, 305, let- 
ter by, 333, 336; Cawein on, 201, 
207, 212, 239, 246, 249, 269, 309, 346, 
347. 

Rissie, Robert, 165. 

Rittenhouse, Jessie B., 170, 259, 297, 
298, 425, 436, 513, 514, 516, 518, 522; 
letter to, 303, 321, 324; Cawein on, 
321. X. 

Rives, Amelie, 91. 

Roach, Abby Meguire, 172. 

Roark, Orien L., 130. 

Robbins, Mrs. Adam, 209. 

Robbins, Jenny Loring, 170, 224, 226; 
letter to, 204, 206, 208, 209, 214, 223, 
231. 

Roberts, Chas. D. G., 237. 

Robertson, Harrison, 172, 212; quoted, 
145-146. 

Robinson, Edwin Arlington, 172, 254, 
263, 275, 297, 425, 436, 438, 516; 
Cawein on, 297. 

Rock Springs, 8, 9, 24, 25, 69, 70, 75, 
76, 121, 318, 398. 

Rockcastle Springs, 205. 

Rogers, James H., 524. 

Rogers, James L., 130. 



Roop, J. L., 53,58, 117. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 124, 170, 252, 

253, 267, 314, 438, 516, 517; quoted, 
112; letter to, 267; letter by, 337. 

Roosevelt, Mrs. Theodore, 267, 337. 
Rose, Algernon, (Authors' Club, 

London), 170, 322; letter to, 321, 

322; letter by, 338,339. 
Rosen, Baron, 268. 
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 176, 182, 

279. 
Rostand, Edmond, 297, 351. 
Roth, Charles G., Sr., 165. 
Roth, Chas. G., 70, 76, 165, 170; letter 

to, 318; reminiscences by, 70-75, 75- 

77. 
Roth, John C, 76, 165. 
Rothert, Otto A., 9, 10 126, 127, 136, 

327, 390, 394, 395, 412, 428, 436; 
letter to, 127. 

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 403. 

Roy, E. C, 151. 

Royster, James Finch, 519. 

Rule, Lucien V., 105, 115, 119, 170, 
226, 390, 395, 404, 436; letter to, 230, 

Ruskin, John, 244. 

Rutherford, Mildred Lewis, 516. 

St. Clair, W. T., 18. 

St. James Apartments, 54, 127, 138, 
139. 

St. James Court, 44, 45, 54, 127, 311. 

St. Louis, 214, 243, 437. 

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 39, 105. 

Savage, Maxwell, 146, 147, 443. 

Scearce, Churchill T., 17. 

Scenario-writing; see Cawein, Mad- 
ison. 

Schauffler, Robert H., 521, 522. 

Scheif, Fritzi, 293. 

Schell, Stanley, 521. 

Schiller, 437, 453. 

Schools attended; see Cawein, Madi- 
son. 

Schuyler, William, 214. 

Scollard, Clinton, 123, 168, 170, 206, 

254, 324, 328, 437, 438, 465; poem 
quoted, 164; letter to, 326. x. 

Scott, Walter, 99, 122, 123, 143, 271, 

328, 426. 
Scowden's Point, 422. 

Semple, H. C, 97, 172, 390, 393, 394. 
Senning's Park, 152. 
Settle, George T., 147, 172. 
Seymour, Chas. B., 107, 113, 114, 149. 
Shakespeare, William, 74, 122, 123, 

202, 247, 347, 352, 411, 424, 425, 437, 

439; Cawein on, 202, 352. 



543 



Index 



Shawnee Park, 46. 

Shearin, Hubert G., 72, 170, 270, 517, 

521 ; letter to, 270. 
Shelley, Percy B., 89, 99, 122, 123, 143, 

203, 271, 272, 328, 360, 403, 424, 425, 

437, 446. 
Shelton, Nathan J., 454. 
Sherley, George Douglass, 190, 193, 

519. 
Sherley, Swager, 317. 
Sherman, Frank Dempster, 123, 172, 

195, 254, 275, 328, 438. 
Sherman, Frederick F., 172. 
Shippen, Edward, 73, 129, 262. 
Shober, C. E., 413, 416. 
Sievers, R. E., 16, 17. 
Sigel George F., 166. 
Silver Creek, 36. 
Silver Hills, 36, 417. 
Slaughter, Mrs. Elvira Sydnor Mil- 
ler ; see Miller, Elvira S. 
Sloan, John, 276. 
Smith, F. Hopkinson, 275. 
Smith, Mrs. Fanny Stone; see Stone, 

Fanny. 
Smith, Zachary F., 96. 
Smollet, T. G., 123. 
Smyser, Sallie, 149. 
Songs, Published, words by Cawein, 

List of, 524. 
South Fork of Harrod's Creek, 8, 69, 

98, 121. 
"Southern Singer," by Riley, 95, 436. 
Spanish American War, 203, 206. 
Speed, Mrs. J. B., (Miss Hattie 

Bishop), 152, 172, 209, 224, 226. 
Speed, James, 46. 
Spencer, T. E., 515. 
Spenser, Edmund, 121, 122, 123, 143, 

182, 271, 333, 357, 425, 437. 
Spiritualism, 71, 73, 74, 129, 225, 260, 

262, 399, 403, 411, 427, 452. 
Stanton, Frank L., 233, 234, 438. 
Stanton, Henry T., 105. 
Stedman, E. C, 95, 98, 168, 171, 280, 

281, 331, 425, 438, 520; letter to, 180, 

185, 195; letter by, 332. 
Stedman, Laura, (Mrs Laura Sted- 
man Gould), 171, 331, 517; letter to, 

279. 
Steffens, Richard D., 48. 
Stelsly, John G., 120, 165, 166. 
Stelsly family, 165, 166. 
Sterrett, Wm. S., 413, 414, 416. 
Stevenson, Burton E., 521, 523. 
Stevenson, Robt. Louis, 348, 410, 426. 
Stirling, George, 301; Cawein on, 301. 



Stockard, H. J., 522. 

Stoddard, R. H., 436. 

Stone, Fanny, (Mrs. F. V. Smith), 

170, 175; letter to, 173. 
Storace, Stephen, 524. 
Stork, Geo. Jacob, 166. 
Stratford-on-Avon Players, 323. 
Sweet, Lillian, (Mrs. Ditto), 170; 

letters to, 177, 178. 
Swift, Ivan, 171; letter to, 274. 
Swiggett, Glen Levin, 516. 
Swinburne, Algernon C, 85, 92, 182, 

201, 217, 218, 283, 424, 437. 
Symons, Arthur, 172, 252, 272, 425. 
Taft, Wm. Howard, 124, 290, 291. 
Tagore, Rabindranath, 316. 
Tanner, Aleph, 523. 
Tarkington, Booth, 213. 
Taylor, Alvin L., 130, 131, 132. 
Taylor, Edmund W., 171; letter to, 

228; Cawein on, 228. 
Teasdale, Sara, (Mrs. E. B. Fel- 

singer), 171, 303, 425; Cawein on, 

303. 
Tennessee, (Nashville), 201. 
Tennyson, Alfred, 85, 92, 96, 99, 101, 

122, 123, 143, 176, 177, 182, 202, 203, 

214, 217, 218, 237, 247, 266, 271, 318, 

332, 361, 371, 425, 437, 439, 446; 

Cawein on, 202. 
Thackeray, Wm. Makepeace, 123, 328, 

410. 
Thixton, Marie, 385. 
Thomas, Edith M., 259, 263, 297. 
Thompson, Francis, 451. 
Thompson, Maurice, 516. 
Thoreau, Henry D., 426. 
Thruston, R. C. Ballard, 172. 
Thulstrup, Thure de, 255. 
Thum, Adrienne, 172. 
Thum, Patty, 38, 39, 172, 427, 439. 
Thum, Wm. W., 120, 147, 150, 151, 172, 

428, 436, 459; questionnaire by, 120- 

125. 
Timrod, Henry, 197, 425, 459. 
Torrence, Ridgely, 172, 254, 258, 259, 

263, 275, 297, 298, 425; Cawein on, 

297. 
Towne, Charles Hanson, 171; letter 

to, 247. 
Townsend, John Wilson, 171, 390, 516, 

518, 519, 522; letter to, 2-50, 263, 269; 

Cawein on, 263, 269. 
Trausill, Mrs. Jessie Lemont, 172, 297. 
Travels; see Cawein, Madison, visits. 
Trent, Wm. P., 172, 293, 521. 
Trowbridge, J. T., 254, 274. 



544 



Index 



Turf Exchange, The, 451. 
Turgenev, Ivan S., 426. 
Uhland, Johann Ludwig, 437, 459. 
Unfavorable conditions; see Cawein, 

Madison. 
Unitarian Church, First, Church of 

the Messiah, 55, 152, 443. 
University of Louisville, 19, 80, 330, 

454. 
Untermeyer, Louis, 523. 
Van Buren, Mrs. Alicia Keisker, 171, 

390, 395; letter to, 274. 
Vandiver, Wm. K., 16, 17. 
Van Dyke, Brook, 275, 276, 288. 
Van Dyke, Henry, 111, 140, 168, 171, 

258, 259, 274, 276, 279, 280, 283, 288, 

293, 295, 302, 312, 316, 328, 425, 435- 

438, 464, 517; letter to, 283, 302, 307, 

312, 315; letter by, 337; Cawein on, 

280, 302, 312; reminiscences by, 

444-446. X. 
Van Dyke, Katrina, 276, 288. 
Vaughan, J. W.,97. 
Vaux-Rover, Mrs. Rose M. de, 172, 

324, 465. 
Venable, Wm. H., 172, 226. 
Vincennes Road, Old, 121. 
Virgil, 88, 176. 
Visits away from Kentucky; see 

Cawein, Madison. 
Waddill, A. M., 90, 93, 122, 404. 
Waddill & Burt, 94. 
Walker, Wm. M., 166. 
Waller, M. M., 16, 17. 
Wallington, Nellie U., 521. 
Walsh, Thomas, 119. 
Walter, Lewis A., 119, 149, 172. 
Waltz, Elizabeth Cherry, 513, 516; 

quoted, 98-101. 
Ward, Mrs. Humphrey, 348. 
Ward's Old Corn Mill, 47. 
Warner, Charles Dudley, 200, 521. 
Washington, D. C, 252. 
Watson, Wm., 172,425. 
Watterson, Henry, 147, 149, 172, 258, 

264 349 
Webb, Aquilla, 115. 
Wedekemper, Howard, 413. 



Weir, James, 127. 

Weiss, George A., 16, 17. 

Wells, Carolyn, 259. 

West Union School, New Albany, 121. 

Wharton, Edith, 253, 343, 348; Cawein 

on, 344. 
Wharton, Joseph, 253. 
Whitelock, Wm. W., 247. 
Whitman, Walt, 316, 346, 364, 372. 
Whittier, John G., 158, 237, 278, 346, 

372, 377, 378, 437. 
Widdemer, Margaret, 523. 
Wilkinson, Florence, 259. 
Will, Last, see Cawein, Madison. 
Williams, Sarah, 520. 
Willson, Augustus E., 114, 119. 
Wilson, Robert Burns, 85, 92, 105, 119, 

172, 176, 186, 206, 258, 404, 414, 425, 

457; Cawein on, 187. 
Wilson, Woodrow, 314, 315, 316. 
Wing, Charles Fox, 130. 
Wister, Owen, 253. 
Woman and Her Relations to Human- 
ity, 73, 129, 262. 
Woman's Club of Louisville, 118, 292, 

321, 445. 
Wood, Wm. F., 385, 389. 
Woodberry, George E., 258, 259, 348. 
Woodbury, Mrs. John L., 116, 171; 

letter to, 313. 
Woodcock, Chas. E., 114. 
Woodson, A. H., 150. 
Woodson, Isaac T., 119, 385, 389. 
Wordsworth, William, 89, 122, 318, 

360, 361, 370, 371, 378, 425, 437, 441, 

442. 

Work, method of; see Cawein, Mad- 
ison. 

Yeats, Wm. B., 301, 318, 351, 425. 

Young, Bennett H., 521. 

Young, Stark, 171, 311; letter to, 306, 
308, 309, 310, 311, 320. 

Youth, girls in Cawein's; see Cawein, 
Madison. 

Youth of Cawein; see Cawein, Madi- 
son. 

Zola, Emile, 403. 



545 



PUBLICATIONS OF THE FILSON CLUB 
1884—1921 

The Filson Club is an historical association of Louisville, 
Kentucky, organized May 15, 1884. It was named after John Filson, 
whose History of Kentucky was published in 1784. The purpose of 
the Club, as expressed in its charter, is to collect and preserve historic 
matter pertaining to Kentucky and the adjacent states. Thirty 
Publications written by members of the Club have been issued ; all are 
limited editions; all are bound in paper cover, except No. 30, some 
copies of which are bound in paper, others in green cloth. These books 
are not for sale in the commercial sense, but copies left beyond the 
requirements of the Club for its members and for its exchange with 
other historical associations are sold at about cost price. All the 
Publications, except No. 29, are from the press of John P. Morton & 
Company, Louisville. The asterisk indicates that the Publication is 
out of print. 

For further information write to The Secretary, The Filson 
Club, Louisville, Kentucky. 

I. John Filson, the first historian of Kentucky. An account of 
his life and writings, principally from original sources. By Reuben T. 
Durrett. Illustrated. Quarto, 132 pages. 1884. 

*2. The Wilderness Road. A description of the routes of 
travel by which the pioneers and early settlers first came to Kentucky. 
By Thomas Speed. Illustrated with a map showing the route of 
travel. Quarto, 75 pages. 1886. 

*3. The Pioneer Press of Kentucky. From the printing of 
the first paper west of the Alleghanies, August 11, 1787, to the 
establishment of The Daily Press, in 1830. By William Henry Perrin. 
Illustrated. Quarto, 93 pages. 1888. 

*4. Life and Times of Judge Caleb Wallace. Some time a 
Justice of the Court of Appeals of the State of Kentucky. By 
William H.Whitsitt. Quarto, 151 pages. 1888. 



F ilson Club Publications 

*5. An Historical Sketch of St. Paul's Church, Louisville, 
Kentucky. Prepared for the Semi-Centennial Celebration, October 
6, 1889. By Reuben T. Durrett. Illustrated. Quarto, xv — 75 
pages. 1889. 

*6. The Political Beginnings of Kentucky. A narrative 
of public events bearing on the history of that State up to the time of 
its admission into the American Union. By John Mason Brown. 
Illustrated with a likeness of the author. Quarto, 263 pages. 1889. 

7. The Centenary of Kentucky. Proceedings at the 
celebration by The Filson Club, June i, 1892, of the one hundredth 
anniversary of the admission of Kentucky as an Independent State 
into the Federal Union. Prepared for publication by Reuben T. 
Durrett. Illustrated. Quarto, 200 pages. 1892. 

8. The Centenary of Louisville. A paper read before the 
Southern Historical Association, May i, 1880, in commemoration of 
the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the city of Louis- 
ville as an incorporated town under an act of the Legislature of 
Virginia. By Reuben T. Durrett. Illustrated. Quarto, 200 pages. 1893. 

*9. The Political Club, Danville, Kentucky, 1786-1790. 
Being an account of an early Kentucky debating society, from the 
original papers recently found. By Thomas Speed. Quarto, xii — 
167 pages. 1894. 

*io. The Life and Writings of Rafinesque. His activities 
in Kentucky and elsewhere. By Richard Ellsworth Call. Illustrated. 
Quarto, xii — 227 pages. 1895. 

*ii. Transylvania University. Its origin, rise, decline and 
fall. The first university in Kentucky. By Dr. Robert Peter and his 
daughter. Miss Johanna Peter. Illustrated with a likeness of 
Dr. Peter. Quarto, 202 pages. 1896. 

12. Bryant's Station. And the Memorial Proceedings held 
on its site under the auspices of the Lexington Chapter D. A. R., 
August 18, 1896, in honor of its heroic mothers and daughters. Five 
addresses, including The Battle of the Blue Licks, by Bennett H. 
Young. Prepared for publication by Reuben T. Durrett. Illustrated. 
Quarto, xii — 277. 1897. 

*i3. First Explorations of Kentucky. Dr. Thomas Walker's 
Journal of an exploration of Kentucky in 1750, being the first record 
of a white man's visit to the interior of that territory; also Colonel 
Christopher Gist's Journal of a tour through Ohio and Kentucky 
in 1 75 1. With notes and sketches. By /. Stoddard Johnston. 
Illustrated. Quarto, xix — 222 pages, il 



Filson Club Publications 

*I4. The Clay Family. Part First: The Mother of Henry 
Clay, by Zachary F. Smith. Part Second: The Genealogy of the 
Clays, by Mrs. Mary Rogers Clay. Illustrated. Quarto, vi — 252 
pages. 1899. 

15. The Battle of Tippecanoe, November 7, 181 1. The 
battle and the battle-ground, including an account of the Kentuckians 
who took part. By Alfred Pirtle. Illustrated. Quarto, xix — 158 
pages. 1900. 

*i6. Boonesborough. Its founding, pioneer struggles, Indian 
experiences, Transylvania days and Revolutionary annals, with full 
historical notes and appendix. By George W. Ranck. Illustrated. 
Quarto, XII — 286 pages. 1901. 

*I7. The Old Masters of the Bluegrass. Biographical 
sketches of the Kentucky artists, Matthew H. Jouett, Joseph H. 
Bush, John Grimes, Oliver Frazer, Louis Morgan and Joel T. Hart. 
By Samuel W. Price. Preface: Life of Samuel W. Price, by Reuben 
T. Durrett. Illustrated. Quarto, xvii — 181 pages. 1902. 

*i8. The Battle of the Thames. In which Kentuckians 
defeated the British, French and Indians, October 5, 1813. With a 
list of officers and privates who won the victory. By Bennett H. 
Young. Illustrated. Quarto, xii — 274 pages. 1903. 

*i9. The Battle of New Orleans. Including the previous 
engagements between the Americans and the British, the Indians, 
and the Spanish which led to the final conflict on January 8, 1815. 
List of Kentuckians in the battle. By Zachary F. Smith. Illustrated. 
Quarto, xvi — 209 pages. 1904. 

*20. The History of the Medical Department of Tran- 
sylvania University. By Dr. Robert Peter. Prepared for publica- 
tion by his daughter Miss Johanna Peter. Illustrated. Quarto, 
XII — 193 pages. 1905. 

*2i. Lopez's Expeditions to Cuba, i 850-1 851. An account 
of the Cardenas and Bahia Honda expeditions, and the Kentuckians 
who took part. By Anderson C. Quisenberry. Illustrated. 
Quarto, 172 pages. 1906. 

*22. The Quest for a Lost Race. Presenting the theory of 
Paul B. Du Chaillu that the English-speaking people of today are 
descended from the Scandinavians rather than the Teutons, from the 
Normans rather than the Germans. With a list of a number of 
Kentuckians whose names indicate descent from the Scandinavians 
or Norman-French. By Thomas E. Pickett. Illustrated. Quarto, 
XXIV — 229 pages. 1907. 



F ilson Club Publications 

23. Traditions of the Earliest Visits of Foreigners to 
North America, the first formed and first inhabited of the Con- 
tinents. Including the tradition that Prince Madoc planted in 
America, in the twelfth century, a Welsh colony which at one time 
occupied the country at the Falls of the Ohio. By Reuben T. Durrett. 
Illustrated. Quarto, xxii — 179 pages. 1908. 

24. Sketches of Two Distinguished Kentuckians. Part 
First: The Life of James Francis Leonard, the first practical sound- 
reader of the Morse alphabet. By John Wilson Townsend. Part 
Second: Biographical Sketch of Colonel Joseph Crockett, a Revolu- 
tionary soldier and Kentucky pioneer. By Samuel W. Price. 
Illustrated. Quarto, xii — 85 and vii — 85 pages. 1909. 

25. The Prehistoric Men of Kentucky. A history of what 
is known of their lives and habits, together with a description of their 
implements and other relics and of the tumuli which have earned 
for them the designation of Mound Builders. By Bennett H. Young. 
Illustrated. Quarto, xiii — 343 pages. 1910. 

26. The Kentucky Mountains. Transportation and com- 
merce from 1750 to 1911. A study in the economic history of the 
Eastern Kentucky coal field. By Mary Verhoeff. Illustrated. 
Quarto, XIII — 208 pages. 191 1. 

27. Petitions of the Early Inhabitants of Kentucky to 
the General Assembly of Virginia, 1769 to 1792. A collection of 
petitions from the pioneer population of Kentucky while it was still 
a county of Virginia. By James R. Robertson. Illustrated. Quarto, 
XV — 246 pages. 1914. 

28. The Kentucky River Navigation. A history of im- 
provements on the river and its mountain tributaries, and of the rise 
and decline of the Kentucky-New Orleans traffic. Also a history of 
the resources and industries of the mountain section of the river basin. 
By Mary Verhoeff. Illustrated. Octavo, vi — 257 pages. 1917. 

29. The Anti-Slavery Movement in Kentucky Prior to 
1850. From the first attack upon slavery in Kentucky down to and 
including the State Constitutional Convention of 1849. By Asa 
Earl Martin. Octavo, 165 pages. Printed by The Standard Printing 
Company of Louisville. 1918. 

30. The Story of a Poet: Madison Cawein. His intimate 
life as revealed by his letters and hitherto unpublished material, 
including reminiscences by his closest associates; also articles from 
newspapers and magazines, and a list of his poems. By Otto A . Rothert. 
In paper cover same as the Club's other Publications; also bound in 
green cloth. Illustrated. Octavo, xi — 545 pages. 1921. 



